Can't Keep Nitrate Levels Up

[PrettyFishies]

I'm dosing daily now - 15 ml of Seachem Nitrogen and I can't get my Nitrate levels over 10 ppm. I'm going to try dosing 20 ml daily, but does anyone have any ideas? Are the plants absorbing the nitrates THAT fast?

I have anubias nana, rotala rotundifolia, rot. macrandra, glossostigma, banana plants, riccia, cabomba and ludwigia repens.

 

[azn_fishy55]

Do you have a light light tank?Are you dosing any form of carbon?I reccoment you use dry ferts instead of the liquid stuff,easier to get desired ppms that way.

 

[Jchillin]

Do you have any fish in the tank? There is no info from what I can see. That is a lot of nitrate dosing. How is your test kit? Is it liquid re-agent?

 

[Glenc]

With enough light and enough plants nitrates can get sucked up fast. I have a problem keeping mine up also, even with a pretty heavy biolaod. I dose 10 ml Flourish Nitrogen every other day in my 20 gallon, does the trick for me at 4WPG. Havn't tried dry ferts yet, might soon.

 

[Purrbox]

Keep in mind that Seachem states that only part of the Nitrogen in their fert can be measured with a testkit.

 

[PrettyFishies]

I don't know what you mean by light light tank.... It's 20 gal, 65W of PC, there are fish. And I don't use Excel because it hurt my vals. The test kit I'm using is Aquarim Pharm - liquid reagent.

Where do I get dry fertilizer for nitrogen?

 

[sherry]

be careful with the AP test kit..

make sure you are shaking the life out of reagent bottle 2.. hit it if you must.. shake really hard... then redo the test.. this time shake bottle two again hard for that 30 seconds and shake the life out of that test tube for 60 seconds after

the active ingredient in that bottle settles out really easilly.. you can have 100 ppm and measure 5.

shake until you can't shake anymore and retest!

 

[czcz]

Where do I get dry fertilizer for nitrogen?

You may be able to get dry KNO3 as Grant's or Greenlight stump remover from a local hardware/gardening store. It's ~$6/lb around here. Serious plant nurseries and www.gregwatson.com also sell KNO3.

 

[PrettyFishies]

OMG. I used your advice and it looks like I have 40-80 ppm!!! Great.... maybe that was what killed 2 of my shrimp.... Well, now that I know, no more dosing for a bit

 

[7Enigma]

Yikes! I'm really sorry to hear that. Yeah in the instructions for the AP test kit they mention how vital the shaking of bottle 2 and then for a minute after is required for proper results. I've definately seen a slight variation when testing depending on the temperature of my house (gets close to 50 by morning). I believe the solution is saturated and precipitates in the bottle so you need to resuspend the mixture before doing the test (the 30seconds before adding).

I was concerned as well since that amount of nitrAte would be very difficult to consume with your current plant load (not to mention the fish load). I could see it happening if you had a full tank of really fast growers like hornwort or wisteria, but it would be tough with your plants to use that much even with the high light level.

Look on the bright side, after a 50% PWC, you will not have to dose near as frequently with the nitrAte.

On a side note, I'm getting really ticked off with the caps that come with these test kits. I'm constantly losing about 1/3 to 1/2ml of solution during the shake steps as the liquid comes up over the side of the caps and into my hand. That 1/3 to 1/2 less ml then throws off the results since the more liquid in the tube the darker the overall color will be. I'm thinking of using some parafilm instead of these crappy caps so that I'm sure no liquid is lost (and so I don't get myself or my cats burned from some of the liquid that gets thrown out). Anyone else have this problem? I've tried squeezing hard on the cap, squeezing softly, shaking differently, and nothing seems to work. And all of my caps do this to a degree!

 

[PrettyFishies]

Well, I did an emergency PWC - only 5% - it was all I had prepared and had 5 minutes before i had to leave for work. I will do another tonight - probably like 30% - I don't want to shock the system, but yes....now I know and I won't go through nitrogen so darn fast!