Controlling Nitrate

[JPA]

I did a 50% water change 2 days ago, including vacuuming the gravel, and today I test my water and find out that my nitrates are above 10.

I have a lot of plants in my tank, and I try not to overfeed, so what else can I do to control nitrates?

I recently bought an expensive Electric Blue Ram, and plan on buying some discus in the near future, so I want to make sure my water is perfect.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to control nitrates in a tank?

Thanks!

 

[Guyver]

You could try adding some shrimp or a crab or two to help clean the tank a little more. What is the size of the tank, and how many/what kinds of plants do you keep in there? Also, what's the bio-load?

10ppm is also a very low amount of nitrates. My tank hovers between 20-40ppm

 

[mfdrookie516]

what kind of filter are you using? with rams and discus, the lower the nitrates, the better. 5ppm or less would be ideal. It could just be the gravel. I had gravel once and had higher nitrates than i did once i switched to sand, im assuming because it traps some stuff in there that even a gravel vac doesnt get. That's alot of the reason most discus tanks are bare bottom

 

[underdog5004]

You could also look at making a sulphur-based nitrate reactor. Unfortunately, you'd either have to make a sump for the tank, or plumb it separately from everything else.
DIY Sulfur Denitrator - Reef Central Online Community

That's a reef forum, but there are posts there saying that it works in freshwater. It takes some time to grow the bacteria, and you have to increase the flowrate slowly, otherwise the bacteria will just eat the sulphur base, and put out sulfides (I think) instead of eating the nitrates.

 

[BigJim]

First, tank/equipment/stock information will go a long way towards diagnosing your nitrate issues. There are a lot of factors that could be causing your issues.

Second, have you tested your tap water for nitrates? Some people have 10+ ppm of nitrates in the water before it even enters the tank.

 

[Purrbox]

Have you tested your tap water? It's quite common to find that there are Nitrates in the tap water. In this instance it is necessary to use RO water to be able to get the Nitrates lower. Unfortunately with a planted tank you don't want your Nitrate levels to get too low or the plants will start to suffer and you'll start getting algae outbreaks. From what I have read, Discus should only be kept in a planted tank by the most experienced Discus keepers, and even then it isn't recommended.

 

[JPA]

Have you tested your tap water?

I just tested the tap water, 0 nitrates.

Tank is a 38 gallon, penguin 200 filter, cardinals, rasboras, 2 rams, wide mouth pleco, cory cats.

I'm not sure of the names of all of the plants I have, but I have a couple of amazon swords, one (big) anubis, one java fern, and then a couple of random plants.

My substrate is gravel, and I'm not going to change my substrate now (I can't even imagine how the logistics of this would work...huge hassle).

What if I were to increase the frequency of my water changes to twice a week? Seems like the only realistic option.

 

[BigJim]

How long has the tank been set up? How often do you clean the gravel? What kind of media are you running in the filter? How many of each fish do you have?

If you don't clean the gravel really well and frequently, it can cause nitrate problems. With the exception of the pleco, you don't have heavy bioload fish, so unless you have dozens of fish, I wouldn't say you're over stocked.

If you're using the Marineland cartridges in the filter, they might be your problem. I found that the Marineland cartridge plugged up way too fast and caused my nitrates to go up. I highly recommend getting a couple of the Marineland media baskets and some filter sponge and making your own cartridges. They last forever and clean up much better than the stock cartridges. Use both slots in the filter.

You could increase the frequency of you water changes, but I'd look for a nitrate source too.

 

[timwag2001]

double the water changes is a decent solution. especially if you plan on getting discus, it'll be practice because you'll be doing it with them in the tank anyway.

another solution to dropping those nitrates would be to up your lighting, add pressurized co2, and getting faster growing plants