nitrates????

[lawliss]

Over the weekend I performed a 10 gallon water change, my tank is 4 months old. I have a clown fish, a dwarf angel (CB) and a coral banded shrimp in there. I had checked the water parameters and everything was fine, PH 8.0, Nitrites 0, Ammonia 0 and then the NITRATES were 40. So that is the reason for the water change... anyway, I rechecked the water yesterday, (did the water change on Sunday) and everything was where it should be including the nitrates. tonight, I checked water again and the nitrates are at around 15. any explanation for this? What should I do to get it down? Another water change? Thanks for the help in advance.

 

[tizzo]

How much and how often do you feed your fish?? How much live rock do you have??

 

[lawliss]

when we first started the tank we were giving them one tiny scrape of cyclop eeze ...(the red package) and then we started giving them mysis shrimp .. one square every other day... but I realized that was probably too much food for them because they werent eating it all, so I went to the fish store this weekend when i bought the new protein skimmer and was getting ready to do the water change and we bought the cyclopeeze again, so its back to once a day but only a tiny scrape of it every day... and before we did the water change we had probably around 100 lbs of live rock, (rough estimate) and we took out about 30-40 lbs over the weekend because it was just too much for the tank, i thought it made it looked cluttered... any ideas?

 

[lubeck]

Removing 40lbs of lr could raise your trates if you recently removed that MUCH> or maybe not, I'm not a pro, YET.

 

[harndog]

Yes it could cause small spike in nitrates. You removed a lot of good bacteria that helps break down everything. Also in removing the rock did you stir up the substrate? If so this for sure can cause nitrates to raise.

 

[tizzo]

Yeah, your beneficial bacteria evenly displaces itself on your rocks. When you take things out of the tank, like LR or even filter media, your parameters will spike until the beneficial bacterial even out again with your bio-load.
LR is like the best filtration in the world! You really should keep it. Unless it's dried out by now...
Cyclop eeze, although healthy, is not the easiest thing for your fish to get in the tank. You can cut those frozen cubes in half or even in quarters to avoid over feeding.
It may also help to get another shrimp or some hermits to eat what hits the floor of the tank. Coral bandeds do not come out in the day as much as say... the scarlet cleaner.

 

[mikeyjer]

What type of substrate are you using? A protein skimmer is a must!!! I have no Nitrate in my tank even though I kept my tank well fed. My sandbed takes care of the nitrate. Plus the clean up crew eats the rest of the food. :happyfish

 

[lawliss]

What type of substrate are you using? A protein skimmer is a must!!! I have no Nitrate in my tank even though I kept my tank well fed. My sandbed takes care of the nitrate. Plus the clean up crew eats the rest of the food. ..............................
I'm using aragonite live sand and crushed coral, i know its not the best, but when i started my tank thats what the LFS told me to do... and last night when i was at the lfs he said its' really a matter of opinion on what you use for the sandbed, because i had told him at some point i'd like to only have livesand in there... yes, i did stir up the sand bed for whoever asked, because there was some green slime algae in there that we were trying to remove, so basically, i should just wait it out?? I was just curious as to if the nitrates being at 15 would hurt the fish? i dont want them dying on me, and thats why i asked, should i do another water change? or should they be fine, since they were living in there with 40 ppm before I took out some of the liverock ?

 

[mikeyjer]

Originally Posted by lawliss
I was just curious as to if the nitrates being at 15 would hurt the fish? i dont want them dying on me, and thats why i asked, should i do another water change? or should they be fine, since they were living in there with 40 ppm before I took out some of the liverock ?
With the Nitrate being at 15ppm is not going to kill your fish. You could do another water change to lower it, but usually anything less then 20ppm isn't going to do any harm. :happyfish

 

[lawliss]

thanks mike ... i appreciate it hopefully they will do okay, I checked the water again last night and it's around 10-15 still but i'll do a 10 gallon water change tonight, have to run to walmart so i can get some more ro water, only have around 4 gallons here.

 

[aufishman]

Originally Posted by lawliss
Over the weekend I performed a 10 gallon water change, my tank is 4 months old. I have a clown fish, a dwarf angel (CB) and a coral banded shrimp in there. I had checked the water parameters and everything was fine, PH 8.0, Nitrites 0, Ammonia 0 and then the NITRATES were 40. So that is the reason for the water change... anyway, I rechecked the water yesterday, (did the water change on Sunday) and everything was where it should be including the nitrates. tonight, I checked water again and the nitrates are at around 15. any explanation for this? What should I do to get it down? Another water change? Thanks for the help in advance.

Nitrates are the end product, they are going to always accumulate (which is why routine water exchanges are part of proper maintenance). Don’t worry so much about it. It really takes a lot of NO3 to cause problems (i.e. killing them) in most healthy fish (and by a lot I’m talking about concentrations over 1,000 ppm). The 96 hour LC 50 for NO3 in salmonids is around 1,300 ppm (I know you're most likely not keeping trout in your tank, but I'm just using them for an example since salmonids are notoriously sensitive to poor water quality). As long as you are performing routine water exchanges, nitrate really shouldn’t be a problem. NO3 is not really toxic to fish, however, excess build up of NO3 can inhibit the ability of nitrobacter to break down NO2 (which is very toxic to fish), but again this takes an excessive amount of NO3 build up.