Did a water change and nitrate is still high. Why?

[Sai Sauce]

the left is the result before water change, the second one is the result after the water change. Its at 180 ppm, do I just need to do partial water change everyday? And I use Dr Foster and Smith ammonia and chlorine/chloramine remover. Now my tank is cloudy. Do I just need to do partial water change everyday?


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[dalto]

First, you should test your tap water to determine if there are any nitrates in your tap.

Second, how big of a water change are you doing. Keep in mind that the amount of water change you do will be equal to the amount of nitrate you remove as long as there no nitrate in your tap water. In other words, if you do a 10% water change you are only removing 10% of the nitrates.

 

[Sai Sauce]

I did a 25%. Should I do a 10% water change everyday? Till the nitrates are gone


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[pstuder33]

First, you should test your tap water to determine if there are any nitrates in your tap.

Second, how big of a water change are you doing. Keep in mind that the amount of water change you do will be equal to the amount of nitrate you remove as long as there no nitrate in your tap water. In other words, if you do a 10% water change you are only removing 10% of the nitrates.

But if you test 180ppm for the tank, do a 50% change that'd bring it to 90ppm than do another 50% and than 45ppm and so on and so fourth. You should test your tap water, I had this issue as well. This forum saved the hobby for me, not to mention fish

 

[dalto]

I did a 25%. Should I do a 10% water change everyday? Till the nitrates are gone

No, you should do as large a change everyday as you are comfortable with. The more the better for nitrate reduction.

 

[Sai Sauce]

Ok thanks! I guess I'm doing a 50% water change then lol


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[gilpi]

As far as I'm concerned and from decades of fish keeping, the more water changes, the better.

 

[Angela1108]

Since the test only goes up so high anything above the highest reading will show the highest. Unless your tap water is wicked high it should be helping. Like everyone suggested as many large water changes as you can do will help.

Also hornwort and anacharis (technically floating plants) are big nitrate pullers. I've always battles nitrates because my tap has some in it. So the water changes do help but not as much as if the tap had 0 in it. My tank is planted and has been for a while now. Once I added a bunch of hornwort and anacharis it has actually helped


A few days after we added it to our tank we went on vacation so we skipped a water change - the two weeks time actually brought down the nitrates about 5-10ppm so they are definitely sucking some up


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[Sai Sauce]

Oh dang I should get some hornworts and anacharis then. Thanks!!


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