persistently high nitrates

[wildroseofky]

My nitrates are staying around 40. Is that really bad? I had a little problem a few weeks ago of overfeeding. It caused my nitrites to go up to .25 and then my Nitrates went up. They had been staying around 20. I had a planaria outbreak. Then freshwater limpets showed up. I got the planaria under control and decided to let the limpets be once I figured out what they were. The fish are eating them.

I have been doing daily water changes of 10% every day. Saturday is my maintenance day and I do a 50% water change, clean the sand, and remove any dead plant matter. I did another 50% pwc yesterday and all the maintenance stuff because my nitrates jumped to 80. I was running two filters but I removed one to use on another tank. I had added half the filter media from the previously cycled filter to the new one but I took almost all of the extra media out of my new filter yesterday to see if that would bring the nitrates down. Today nitrates are still 40. Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0. I don't know what else to do. Should I just stop worrying about it. My fish and shrimp seem fine. My fry are growing fast.

Tanks stats

29 gal, Aquaclear50 filter, pool filter sand substrate, T8 lighting. I use Prime water conditioner, Seachem Flourish Comp fertilizer and root tabs.

PH 7.2
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 40+

 

[Mebbid]

40 is starting to get high and if you have fish that are sensitive it would start to be an issue. How is the stocking on your tank? With that amount of water changes your nitrates should definitely be lower.

 

[wildroseofky]

I only have 2 adult mollies and two four week old molly fry. I have 7 ghost shrimp. I do have plant. A mix of moneywort, pennywort, ludwigia, and dwarf sag that I added about 4 weeks ago. I just added some christmas moss yesterday. Just did water tests and Nitrate is 40, ammonia 0, nitrite 0 and ph is 7.6. I did just open a new api nitrate test. Could it be off? I checked it in my 10 gal that has no fish and I am only showing 10 nitrates in it.

 

[Mebbid]

If the nitrates still aren't climbing then I wouldn't worry about it too much. The ammonia source that contributed is probably used up. That being said I would keep a semi close eye on it and the 50% water change on sat would probably still he a good idea. I've never heard of any API tests being inaccurate personally, but nitrates can occur naturally in drinking water so that might be where some of them are coming from

 

[Cynic]

Try two 80% changes for two days.