Mid posted.
Koi-Lo wrote:
Daniel Morrow at was heard opining:

Nitrite is
borderline and nitrate is way too high.

The hornwart should have taken care of nitrates. It sounds like your
tank needs a lot of partial water changes and some good gravel
vaccing.

I think plants eat more nitrates as they grow/regrow so me throwing a chunk
of it in the compost heap once in a while and letting it regrow will cause
the effect of the plants eating the nitrates much more
effectively/efficiently. Thanks for reminding me of these things - I already
knew that more water changes and gravel vaccing is what I should do except
in my case as far as nitrates go - they never go away or even measure any
less with my test kits. With my test kits (tetra, seachem) the nitrates are
sky high even a day after a 40%+ water change. Go figure. I have kind of
given up on extra water changes as it so far has made no significant
difference, and I have heard the nitrate test kits (at the very least the
affordable ones) are flawed so I plan on doing what I know for me is
standard maintenance and not changing 40% of the water every other day with
no significant change noticed. Summary - about a month ago one of my silver
dollars got caught between the mass of hornwort and one heater (I felt
terrible for not noticing in time and I deservedly felt stupid for not
anticipating this since I used to always unplug my heaters when lowering
(changing) water but recently stopped unplugging them since I thought the
auto-shut of feature would prevent burns but I learned in this case the
auto-shutoff prevents damage to the heater - not any unlucky fish (in other
words the heater gets hot enough to burn fish still even with the auto-shut
off feature) and that silver dollar experienced one big bad burn,
fortunately I changed water like mad after that until recently and I truly
believe because of my excellent results (the silver dollar is completely
healed except for the last layer of its flesh and even that seems to be
healing over good now, at it's worst in the past bones were showing
(equivalent of a rib cage) the water changes are like what the experienced
users here say they are - the one overall best medicine. I never used
medicine to treat the silver dollar and it appears he/she will be 100% soon
and right now is at like 98%. I never used medicine for it because of what I
have read here and because of my troubling past experience with medication
with fish so you all were right that the one overall best medicine for fish
is water changes (basically fresh relatively clean plain old dechlorinated
and possibly a little salt, water). The silver dollar will be 100% soon I
expect and is out of the woods to say the least. The silver dollar got stuck
because I already had the water level very low (50% I think) and the
hornwort ended up getting compressed into even a tighter mass than before.
So I have seen the benefit of water changes and it's definite place in
improving things but on the other hand the nitrates seem unaffected by extra
(EXTRA) water changes/vaccing and I want to be practical. I guess the test
kits are flawed, I am actually starting to wonder if there is a foreign
unaccountable substance in my water which registers as nitrate or something.
I have two other tanks with super high nitrates without the mysterious guppy
deaths my silver dollar tank experiences and it has been like this since my
original getting started in this hobby with my bedroom tank (at one time I
only had this one bedroom tank and it worked beautifully until the guppy
population in it grew too populated and the mysterious deaths would occur.
Then I moved them all to the silver dollar tank which was death free until
that population got large, then I brought some of them into the bedroom tank
and now they are repopulating it and I am half expecting mysterious deaths
to once again show up in this tank again). I have had a large population of
fancy guppies in the turtle tank for over 1 and 1/2 years and the only
health problem I have had with the turtle tank is one case of a male fancy
guppy having fatal dropsy. Other than that that's it. At this moment I am
convinced the fancy guppies breeding so much is the root cause
(overpopulation) and that the mysterious deaths is the way this mini-nature
deals with overpopulation, and there is scientific information to back this
up I think.



Every other parameter is fine
except for maybe the ph being at 6.5.

I found keeping guppies alive and healthy takes water with a PH over
7. They do much better in harder more alkaline water. In a PH below
7.2 an in slightly acid water they don't do nearly as well. Anyway,
that's been my experience with guppies and other live bearers.

I agree and am working on a solution. I want to find some limestone or
something around this area and buy a bunch of it and put it in the canister
filter to keep the ph and alkalinity up although the silver dollars probably
would prefer the way it s now (low ph and low alkalinity). I have tried what
is essentially crushed coral and it only increases general hardness, not
carbonate hardness (alkalinity) which is what I am looking for and that
would lead to increased ph as well. Go figure as it also is totally against
my and I believe other's knowledge about such things. This is the second
thing which I don't get in my hobby so far.



Ripping out the hornwort should
cause more to grow and thus more nitrate to be removed in the
process.

That can happen! :-) I'm surprised it's growing so well for you

I'm surprised too - it's funny - anachris and egeria densa die off almost
immediately in my tanks and people keep telling me to keep it and I keep
yelling back "it won't grow for me!", but I am glad some kind of fast
growing plant actually does now even if only in that one tank only
(hornwort).

as
it didn't thrive for me in NY's soft slightly acid water. I just had
an odd thing happen with hornwart. After having it for many years,
both indoors and in my ponds - about 90% of it suddenly did a
die-off! I once read about bamboo doing the same thing. I suppose
it'll spring back from the small bits I have left of it....... if
not I'll have to start with a fresh bunch.

Thanks again - good luck and later!

I offer the same service to you as I recently did to mister gardner, but
practicality might keep people from ever calling me out on my word. You're
welcome - good luck and later!