Nitrates in Tap Water

[bman7842]

My tap water straight out of the faucet gets around 10-20 ppm nitrates. I live in a farming area and I could only assume the high nitrates are from field run off but I don't use well water so I'm never sure. Either way I have what others have told me is quite high nitrates in my water and I wanted to know what others did to address this issue? Buying water or an R/O system is insane imo but stuff like plants for the tank have been of interest to me. When nitrates are high from the start and you have a large turtle producing even more waste that gets converted into nitrates, you can assume I do changes often due to high nitrates and would love to hear your suggestions on how to get lower nitrates from my tap.

 

[Delapool]

Hi, have you tried plants with the turtle? For plants that would be a nice nitrates range.

A holding tank of just plants might also work (use the water from that for tank changes). Have you checked ammonia and nitrites as well?

 

[toolman]

Sounds like a good situation for plants in filter also, some here do that to lower nitrates.

 

[Delapool]

Sounds like a good situation for plants in filter also, some here do that to lower nitrates.

That's an excellent idea - forgot about that and it would keep the turtle away from the plants.

 

[abw0004]

Floating plants in particular will lower the most Nitrates. Look for Frogbit or slavonia Minima.

 

[bigemrg]

In my area of the UK nitrates are as much as 40ppm straight from the tap! To combat this I've recently installed an under sink filter unit in my kitchen that takes nitrate filter cartridges, and they reduce nitrate to 0ppm.

The unit I use is manufactured by Pozzani but I'm sure other manufacturers are available.

Thought it might be an alternative to using live plants...

Ian