7ppm NO3 in my tap water/cycling question

[Orcus332]

Hi all,
I'm new to this whole aquarium thing and have a few questions. I recently set up a 10gal 1.5wpg tank with an aquaclear 30 filter. I am currently cycling the tank, but I jumpstarted the cycling process by adding lots of filter gunk from a friends tank. I also have 7 danios in the tank, but I plan on moving to dwarf puffers once the cycle is complete. You can see the plants I have in my signature. I got the tank going on Nov. 29th. Yesterday my water parameters were as follows: NH3=.25ppm NO2=0 NO3=10ppm. Today i did an early morning 50%pwc and tested again in the evening: NH3=.13ppm NO2=0 NO3=20ppm. I was worried about the nitrates being too high for my fish so I did another 50% pwc. I also tested my tap water and found it to contain 7ppm of NO3.
Does anyone have any insight as to where I am in the cycling process? Should I be worried about my tap water NO3?
When should I worry about my NO3 being too high since this is a planted tank, and the plants need the NO3, but the fish do not?

 

[greenmaji]

that much NO3 in any thank I would think is a problem.. In a low light tank a very big problem..
maybe a fishless holding tank or a terrestral plant filter with a holding tank would get your water back down to usable specs.. kinda drastic but your tap water is very drastic.. Hope someone else has a better plan.. :?

 

[BrianNY]

Nitrate tests are useless while your tank is cycling. The test actually works by measuring the combined values of nitrites and nitrates. So you're going to get a false nitrate reading if any nitrites are present at all. Therefore the test becomes reliable only after nitrites have spiked and returned to zero.

HTH

 

[Hoovercat]

20ppm of NO3 isn't too much nitrate anyway. Just be careful if you decide to add fish and acclimate them by mixing tank water into the "shipping" water. When yor water tests free of NH3 I'd add the puffer's this way. Others may disagree but I haven't seen problems caused by nitrates of up to 40ppm. I'm not saying you should run levels this high but I've seen them while I was getting dosing worked out and haven't seen any ill effects on my livestock.

 

[malkore]

Higher lighting levels would also cause plants to uptake the nitrate more rapidly. but more light means CO2 injection and more maintenance work.

20ppm is managable as long as you run phosphate around 1.5-2ppm max.