Nitrates and Water Changes

[jonboy]

Hi,

I have a relatively new 55 gal. tank that has cycled with 0 Ammonia and 0
Nitrites. I have a good number of smaller fish and lots of plants in the
tank: Tetras, Gouramies, Barbs, Pleco, Swordtails, etc. I'm keeping the
temp. at 78 and use salt in my water as suggested for fresh water tanks. My
fish seem to be healthy. I'm a little confused about water changes. I just
tested my water for Nitrates and the test showed I had around 20 mg/L as
tested with a Hagen NO3 test. Is this a reasonable amount of Nitrates in
the water? What would be a good water changing routine? Any advice is
appreciated.

[NetMax]

"jonboy" > wrote in message
.. .
> Hi,
>
> I have a relatively new 55 gal. tank that has cycled with 0 Ammonia and
0
> Nitrites. I have a good number of smaller fish and lots of plants in
the
> tank: Tetras, Gouramies, Barbs, Pleco, Swordtails, etc. I'm keeping
the
> temp. at 78 and use salt in my water as suggested for fresh water
tanks. My
> fish seem to be healthy. I'm a little confused about water changes. I
just
> tested my water for Nitrates and the test showed I had around 20 mg/L
as
> tested with a Hagen NO3 test. Is this a reasonable amount of Nitrates
in
> the water? What would be a good water changing routine? Any advice is
> appreciated.

I would not use too much salt, as you have fish which would not
appreciate it.

If you do 20% w/c a week, what would your NO3 level at? Try this and
measure your NO3 just before you start the w/c.

At 20% w/c per week, if your NO3 continues rising, I would increase the
w/c size & rate to maintain an NO3 below 40ppm (high NO3 makes it
difficult to acclimate fish from low NO3, such as from an LFS or friend's
tank). Alternately, add more plants, more light and/or feed less
fishfood and gravel vac more.

If your NO3 drops below 20ppm, then I would reduce my w/c to 10% a week.
This would indicate that your plants were absorbing the NO3. If the
plants reduce your NO3 to zero, I would simply maintain a 10% w/c per
week routine.

This is just what I would do. There isn't a 'correct' method, only
recipes which we share with each other. My way is somewhat useful if you
have no real feel for controlling water parameters, so in the absence of
info, it's a workable guideline (not too radical, not too conservative,
so everyone could potentially disagree with it ;~).

NetMax