High nitrates help!

[Emcglamery]

So my tank was cycled and everything was going well, but recently my nitrates jumped from about 15~20 to about 30~40. Nothing changed, I have one little fry swimming around but no new fish. My water change schedule was about 20% as needed with a good gravel vacuum now I've been doing 25-30% weekly to see if that'd help, and I'm still getting nowhere... I added more plants, but idk what else to do.... Help!?

 

[bud29]

Many people do a 50% water change weekly. If you do that, that could help control the nitrate levels.

 

[Emcglamery]

Okay. Any ideas what could have caused the spike?

 

[bud29]

I really don't know.

 

[vanimal]

I also do 50% weekly water changes and keep my trates at 5. Live plants will help get a Marimo Moss Ball.

 

[blert]

First, you need to know what you are putting back into the tank when you do a PWC. Test your source water for nitrate.

Second, a 20% PWC "as needed" won't cut it to keep nitrate low. If the nitrate level in the tank is at 40ppm and you do a 20% PWC, assuming your source water has zero nitrate, you have only lowered it to 32ppm.

Lastly, plants are not really going to help that much unless you are supplying the rest of the things they need to grow and use that nitrate quickly (light, ferts, possibly CO2), and have the right type of fast growing plants (a lot of them).

 

[CatatonicBug]

What do you do if the source water has high nitrates to begin with? My 2 planted tanks suffer from hair algae and my cichlid tank has dark, dense tufts of algae all over the gravel. No matter what I do, it won't go away.

 

[GoldsGuy]

So my tank was cycled and everything was going well, but recently my nitrates jumped from about 15~20 to about 30~40. Nothing changed, I have one little fry swimming around but no new fish. My water change schedule was about 20% as needed with a good gravel vacuum now I've been doing 25-30% weekly to see if that'd help, and I'm still getting nowhere... I added more plants, but idk what else to do.... Help!?

Hi. I've also been experiencing the same issue in my tank. Was reading practically same and was changing about 20% weekly. Started to do 40% PWC which has helped.

Nothing changed in my tank, and also added more plants including the moss balls.

What I suspect is my fish are growing thus adding more bio load just by nature of growth.

Continue to monitor and increase percentage and frequency of PWCs. If it as as mine where it could be fish are growing, u may want to consider upgrading your tank as I am.

 

[Emcglamery]

I am going to up my water changes, but I know my water I use to refill my tank reads 0,0,0. So it's not that, my plants get co2, and all that, my tanks not over stocked and I have plenty of filtration, oh and we don't over feed! lol

I forgot to mention for a while when this started we were doing every other day changes of 12 gallons. And that didn't help. And we also added aquarium salt. (don't know if that factors in at all!). If it's cuz the fish are growing, could it be a cycling issue and I'm just waiting for more bacteria growth?

 

[Bbarb27]

If it's cuz the fish are growing, could it be a cycling issue and I'm just waiting for more bacteria growth?

Bacteria will only take care of the ammonia and nitrite. More ammonia (due to growing/larger fish) means more nitrite which eventually means more nitrate. If you increase the load on the front end of the cycle (more ammonia), it increases the result of the end of the cycle (nitrate).

With younger/smaller fish, you probably could get by with less PWCs The only way to remove nitrate is through rapidly growing plants or water changes. As your fish grow/bio load increases, so does the need for PWCs.

I prefer do larger water changes weekly (sometimes twice per week) to reduce nitrate by 50%. If your nitrate is at 40 and you do a 20% water change, you've only reduced it by 20%, which means your nitrate is still at 32 and will soon be back up to 40. If you do a 50% water change, that brings it down to 20ppm, increasing the time between water changes.