Baffled By Nitrate Hike

[Jen]

I did my regular 50% waterchange on Thursday. I didn't test my water, as its always been the same, and dosed my 10ppm nitrate. Saturday I test the water and its 40ppm!, I did a 50% w/c, and tested this morning, and its still up at 30 or 40. My tap water tests at 0-5ppm, so I know it's not that. I haven't added any fish, or removed a ton of plants.

Any thoughts as to what the cause could be?

 

[anvil63]

My only thought is that you might live in an area that has a lot of agriculture around its water source and you've had a bit of rain in recent days. I went to college in an area with quite a few traditional farms and a large hog farm with about 40,000 head and the nitrate in my tap jumped considerably whenever it rained.

Carl

 

[Jen]

We haven't had any rain, I live in the middle of a city, and my tap water is normal... 0 - 5 ppm. Good thoughts though

 

[AndyTaylor]

Possibly due to decaying plant matter? I think this is where my nitrate levels are coming from too....just a theory though.

 

[zig]

Probably stating the obvious..........you sure your doing the test correctly?

I dont know canoechiq i would just double check everything you are doing, are you sure the 10ppm you dosed was auctually 10ppm and not higher etc, also the reason i asked about the testkit is if you dont shake the B solution sufficiently it will give false readings and keep in mind nitrate testkits usually only have a shelf life of about 6 months, you may very well be doing all the above correctly but its no harm in double checking everything you are doing, strange though........good luck finding what it is.

 

[Discomafia]

Try bringing your water to a lfs and ask them to test it for you, so you can confirm the readings...

 

[George Farmer]

As zig suggests it could be a false reading. The kits themselves are notoriously unreliable and there's the human factor in the interpretation.

If you know your tap water NO3 level, approx NO3 uptake rate and dosing levels then testing is almost unecessary. I've binned my NO3 kit!

 

[Jen]

I didn't used to shake the second bottle, but I know zig mentioned it to someone else a while back, and I've been sure to do it.

On the last vacuum I sucked up all the dead and dying crap lying on the bottom of the tank. I think I'm just going to do a couple of vac's to bring it down.