Crud! Nitrate levels keep rising! :(

[Mordachai]

****. I thought that two 50% WC would do the trick last weekend.

It started as I noticed that there was too much GSA growing (Green Spot Algae). That's not the worst thing in the universe, so I didn't think too much of it. I rechecked my ferts, and realized that I'd been underfeeding TE (trace elements) by 1/2. So, I mixed up a new batch, cleaned out the GSA by scraping it off of the walls with a razor, culled plant leaves and other surfaces that was inundated by it, and figured it would balance.

A week later, I discover I have a ton of BBA (black beard algae). !@#!@#$
So, crud. I take a water sample, and lo & behold, my Nitrates are maybe 40ppm. That must be it! (I think to myself). So I do a 50% WC immediately, then two days later, check - it's around 20ppm, so I do another, and now it's pretty far down.

I figure that must be it - I'd ignored it for a while, and nitrates were the fundamental problem.

Now, it's a week later, and my BBA has only continued to flourish! Huh? So I just did another nitrate test (surely it can't be that much higher in less than a week since I dropped it to 10ppm), but !@#!@# It's 40ppm again!

What the snork.

Anyway, I'll do another 50% WC in the morning, but now I'm confused. How are my nitrates skyrocketing like this?

Currently I Have a 55 US gallon tank. Nitrite and Ammonia are undetectable. I run CO2 during light-cycle, starting 1hr before lights, stopping 1hr before dark. I have a PH sensor that controls the solenoid, and it's set to turn off CO2 if PH ever drops to 7.0. PH cycles from about 7.8 in the morning, to 7.3 after a full day of light+CO2. So the CO2 has never turned off during an injection period.

I have a drop-checker as a secondary test - it remains blue all of the time.

I'm running a build-my-led - 48" strip (what was their "planted" spectrum before the revamped their site to give many more options).

I run the lights 7:30 hrs / day. The room is relatively insulated from outside light (north facing, we're in the woods, tank's farthest spot from windows).

The tank has a LOT of plant growth at this point. It did before the GSA ramped up, and even more now. So a lot of competition for resources.

The substrate is Eco Complete. Tank has been planted and cycled with fish for about 4 months. I've got a Fluvial 306 and a whisper 60, both recently cleaned, for filtration duties.

The water is crystal clear, no green tint to it, the fish are generally healthy & happy.

I have:

7 checkered barbs
2 cherry barbs
5 neon tetras
4 phantom tetras
6 lamp eyes
2 ottocinculous
2 bushy nosed plecos
1 red tail shark
20 crystal shrimp (10 red/10 black)
4 amano shrimp
4 coolie loaches
2 apple snails (aka mystery snails)

I normally feed 1/day TetraMin tropical flakes - about what they eat in < 1 min. I supplement that with the occasional few mini algae wafers (more before the plants had really matured), and some Shirakura shrimp ball food.

I have never seen the algae wafers or shrimp food last more than a day. I only use it sometimes (more before the algae breakout, but even then only about every 3rd day).

I dose my plants using PPA pro daily.

Any ideas? Why the very high rate of nitrates? Is it due to rapid break-down of plant matter? Am I overfeeding (my fish don't seem to think so). Have I overcrowded?

 

[Rivercats]

First off when you cleaned your filter did you actually wash all the sponges under running tap water until they were clean. I run all Fluval 406's, 4 on my 220, and I can tell you from experience that if you don't clean the sponges when you clean the canister every 4 weeks you will end up with raising nitrates. I clean the canisters except for the bio-media and never have a mini cycle. Also sometimes you get a buildup in HOB's that can cause the same problem just so you know.

Too much detris in the substrate can be the other cause but honestly I've run a planted tank for up to 5 years and never vacuumed the substrate without ever having it cause high nitrates. But substrate can be an issue.

OR you said your dosing PPS-Pro daily? Do you have your nitrates, phosphates, and potassium all mixed in one dosing bottle or do you have nitrates in their own dosing bottle and phosphates and potassium in another dosing bottle? You should be testing both your nitrate and phosphate levels at the end of each week right before your weekly 50% WC. This will show you if your levels are were they should be, too high, or too low. You want to shoot for nitrates of 10-20ppm and phosphates 1-3ppm. I prefer phosphates at 3-5ppm myself as when kept within these levels you don't get GSA.

So the third reason your nitrates may be too high is because your tank is already running at levels high enough you don't need to be dosing nitrates at all. Most all of my tanks run at about 10ppm of nitrates normally and I rarely have to dose them in any of my tanks.

 

[Mordachai]

I just read your post to someone else last night about separating out the nitrates from the other macros.

So, I'm going to give that a shot starting today.

Something(s) are obviously still off.

I don't have a phosphate test kit - so I'll go grab one asap.

Is there a way to directly test potassium?

I notice that when I do a WC, I get 5x as much pearling as on other days. I mean - that fresh water hits the tank and I get a super-explosion of large air bubbles coming from everywhere. So I keep thinking that I'm still lacking something. Potassium too low, or what???

I just did my 50% WC, tore out a lot of leaves that had Staghorn algae on them - or a few that had a resurgence of GSA. I realized now that what I thought was BBA was mostly Staghorn. I do have a few small patches of BBA though - now that I can see the difference.

I'll do a cleaning of my fluval and HOB over the course of the week. The fluval today, the HOB maybe wednesday. I did the HOB last weekend - and I rinse the hell out of everything when I clean the filters - although I'm a lot gentler with the biomedia in both filter types. I'm on well water, so I don't think it's too much of a shock for the BB.

Thank you for your response. It helps a lot.

My tank is a ton more green than it used to be - many plants are thriving, and it's looking like an underwater jungle, which is my goal (with fish swimming in and out of the flora, disappearing back into the depths of green and shadow).

 

[Rivercats]

Pearling related to CO2 levels in the water not potassium. So if your tap water has a lot of CO2 in it and you do a large WC then your plants can pearl in this instance. Mine used to do that in the 220 when I did my 50% WC weekly. So if you want plants to pearl you need to increase your CO2.

 

[bshenanagins]

Yeah of your dosing nitrates I highly suggest you stop altogether. Your stock list should provide more than enough nitrogen for your plants. Algae also likes more light than your plants need or can keep up with so if you have too much light intensity this can also be your problem. Slow growing plants welcome algae if you have too much light.