High Nitrate

[george kimes]

A few day's ago I posted about sick Mollies and Guppy's. Thank you
for your generous replies and suggestions. Since then, I took a water
sample to Pet Smart and found that the Nitrate level was 200 where the
max should be no more than 20. Changed out half the water and added
some medication. All looks well. Thanks again.

[KEITH JENNINGS]

If you changed half the water, your nitrate is down to about 100, which is
still dangerously high. It's your tank, but I recommend you do at least 2
more 50% water changes this week. After that, you should do at least 20%
water changes weekly. Getting some live plants would help too. 100 ppm
nitrate is better than 200, but still pretty bad...

Just my $.02us
Keith J.

"george kimes" > wrote in message
...
> A few day's ago I posted about sick Mollies and Guppy's. Thank you
> for your generous replies and suggestions. Since then, I took a water
> sample to Pet Smart and found that the Nitrate level was 200 where the
> max should be no more than 20. Changed out half the water and added
> some medication. All looks well. Thanks again.

[Marksfish]

> A few day's ago I posted about sick Mollies and Guppy's. Thank you
> for your generous replies and suggestions. Since then, I took a water
> sample to Pet Smart and found that the Nitrate level was 200 where the
> max should be no more than 20. Changed out half the water and added
> some medication. All looks well. Thanks again.

You would probably find it very difficult to keep nitrates below 20ppm, most
domestic water is higher than that out of the tap. You would only have
100ppm if you changed 50% of the water and used 0ppm water to refill it.
Keep up with the water changes though and try to find out why your nitrates
are so high. It could be you are overfeeding in which case, cut out feeding
for a few days and re- introduce gradually. It could be a build up of
detritus in the gravel in which case a good poke around with a gravel
cleaner should help.

What sort of filter do you have? If you have a canister, consider adding
some sintered glass media into a basket, or even alfagrog. This has the
benefit of a huge surface area will allow a certain amount of
denitrification to take place.

Regards

Mark

[NetMax]

couple of comments midposted...

"Marksfish" > wrote in message
...
> > A few day's ago I posted about sick Mollies and Guppy's. Thank you
> > for your generous replies and suggestions. Since then, I took a
water
> > sample to Pet Smart and found that the Nitrate level was 200 where
the
> > max should be no more than 20. Changed out half the water and added
> > some medication. All looks well. Thanks again.

I would doubt the accuracy of Pet Smart's assertion that the NO3 was at
200ppm. I'm not even aware of a test kit which reads 200ppm, never mind
having any degree of accuracy at those levels. Suffice to say that your
NO3 levels are high and you should be diluting them. I typically try to
minimize the NO3 changes to about 40ppm a day. ymmv

Your pH, gH and kH would be of interest as well. You would want to avoid
having these parameters too low.

> You would probably find it very difficult to keep nitrates below 20ppm,
most
> domestic water is higher than that out of the tap. You would only have
> 100ppm if you changed 50% of the water and used 0ppm water to refill
it.
> Keep up with the water changes though and try to find out why your
nitrates
> are so high. It could be you are overfeeding in which case, cut out
feeding
> for a few days and re- introduce gradually. It could be a build up of
> detritus in the gravel in which case a good poke around with a gravel
> cleaner should help.

Domestic water in the UK perhaps ;~) A 20ppm NO3 level would probably
fail water standards in many countries, and at the least, indicate that
you are downhill from a farm and should be checking for e-coli bacteria
periodically. Hopefully out collegeuges in the UK only have to worry
about, and work around the NO3 concerns.

> What sort of filter do you have? If you have a canister, consider
adding
> some sintered glass media into a basket, or even alfagrog. This has the
> benefit of a huge surface area will allow a certain amount of
> denitrification to take place.

Excellent suggestion. Bio-max (or similar) and lots of plants. I've
found Hornwort to be a good nitrate sponge, though I'm sure there are
many others which would do as well. I was told that Java fern works well
too, but I've never seen any data, and it surprises me that such a slow
growing plant could remove much nutrients from the water.

NetMax

> Regards
>
> Mark