Dodgy Water

[AshBreed]

I have been doing 20% water changes weekly in my understocked 75 uk gallon tank which is without plants and checked my readings today to find.

Ammonia 0

Nitrite 0

Nitrate 160ppm

Somehow I managed to not check the NITRATE level for a few weeks as my kit ran out so was very confused by the rise. It used to be about 40 ppm.

 

[Pheonix]

heya ash

what kind of filtration do you use for your tank?

do you have a large substrate base?

some of these places can be nitrate factories it could be one of them is doing so in your system, give us a bit more info and we can see what will help

Andy

 

[AshBreed]

**************UPDATE*************

Just check my tap water and that also reads 160 ppm?

Dont know what to do!

I have about 1-2" of crushed coral and it running on a Ehiem 2128 so its got plenty of filtration.

 

[BiffMalawi]

There are alot of people in England, especially London who have this problem. Hopefully those who have corrected it can chime in.

I think your best option is plants. Plants eat nitrate like crazy. I am not into plants myself since I kill them regularly but there are a couple I have used.

Java Moss virtually unkillable, will work in low light cheap to get (I think). Itied it to sections of PVC pipe and put it in all of my tanks. Instant hidey holes, cool plants, and nitrate buffer.

Any kind of floating plant. I had water lettuce. It had great roots that hung down a couple of inches and it looked great.

Of course there is RO water but that can be expensive and tough to do in large quantities.

Good luck with it.

 

[Cheffi]

OMG mine comes out of my tap at 40ppm and I thought that was high. Sorry don't know what to suggest unless you can use a nitrate reductor.

 

[AshBreed]

I think im going to go done the Java Moss path, I might try and use it as a back ground?

 

[Druchii]

How about Nitrozorb or something to go in the extrnal eheim??

 

[AshBreed]

How about Nitrozorb or something to go in the extrnal eheim??

Will go and pick some up tomorrow.

Has anyone tried Nitro Zorb?