Where have all my Nitrates gone?

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Saltair

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Nov 3, 2010
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201
Location
New England
So I think my tank has finished cycling. Ammonia has been at zero for a week and after a scary Nitrite spike that had me lugging water like mad I tested 0 there today so I went ahead and tested Nitrate and there were hardly any. Hard to tell for sure, probably off 0ppm, but not to 5ppm. I have some hornwort in the tank that seems to be growing like crazy. It really took off in the last day or so. Is it using up the Nitrate? Is this bad or good?
 
its ok. the good thing is that your amonia and nitrites are zero. Your nitritates are in other words beneficial bacteria that will change your nitrites into nitrates. when you add fish you will start to see more nitrates. Main thing is to keep amonia and nitrites at zero.
 
Hornwort is a nitrate sponge. They can grow 1 or 2" a day under good light.

My tank routinely bottoms out the nitrates (in spite of all the goldfish & their wastes) unless I add more.

As long as your added ammonia is disappearing (you are doing fishless cycling?) & there is no nitrites, your tank is cycled.
 
I cycled with fish. Is the low Nitrate a problem? Do you just prune back the hornwort? I will have a tank full of it soon.
 
its not a problem. your fish will produce waste that in turn will change to nitrates. You may have to remove some eventually since im guessing you dont want your tank being all plants.
 
When hornwort goes crazy, they can totally take over a tank .... <They can take over a small pond if not pruned!> I would just cut them in half & keep the tops (the nice part) and throw out the rest. <You can keep the bottoms too if you want more hornwort ...:) > In the summer I threw out handfuls of hornwort weekly ... sometimes I have to prune twice a week .... They seemed to have slowed down in the winter.

0 nitrate is great for fish .... Plants won't like that. If you have other plants in addition to the hornwort, you might have to start fertilizing. <Or remove some of the hornwort so they don't hog all the nitrates.> 0 nitrates may also encourage black brush or Blue Green Algae. <These fix nitrogen from the air.> If you start having those kinds of algae, you might have to rethink the nitrate.
 
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