Nirtate

[djceri_g]

Ive had my juwel 96 running for over 5 months now and never seem to get any problems with Ammonia and Nitrie. I do 30% water changes every week. my fish look healthy but the problem in having is my NirtAte readings. They seem to be low, between 0 - 5 ppm. It this normal? also, my plants dont seem to thrive! it this because i always clean the gravel? Also, i have 5 live plants, do they suck all the Nitrate? Will it be okay to carry on doing weekly water changes? or will this stop the nitrate from rising a little?

 

[Castellop123]

Cheers...

 

[djceri_g]

thanks for that! should i cut out on water changes? maybe 20% every 2 weeks? also someone told me that if nitratAte's and low my tank hasn't been cycled properly!

 

[thegnu]

hi,
your tank is cycled properly. what type of filter have you got on it. i would keep up with the water changes thats good. if your plants are not growing too well this might be that they are slow growing anyway, or could be a lack of nutrients as you suspect. if you don't have any other problems and your tank isn't overrun with algae (and i suspect not) you could try adding a few more fish to your tank. nothing huge or loads, just a shoal of shoaling tetras or something. it can sometimes be a balancing act. when i buy more fish i buy more plants

 

[djceri_g]

hi,
your tank is cycled properly. what type of filter have you got on it. i would keep up with the water changes thats good. if your plants are not growing too well this might be that they are slow growing anyway, or could be a lack of nutrients as you suspect. if you don't have any other problems and your tank isn't overrun with algae (and i suspect not) you could try adding a few more fish to your tank. nothing huge or loads, just a shoal of shoaling tetras or something. it can sometimes be a balancing act. when i buy more fish i buy more plants

I have a Juwel filter thats built in. I did water changes yesterday and noticed there wasnt good power coming from the hose. So i pulled it out and back in again and works fine now. Maybe ethis was slowing the cycle down a bit. The tank had been running for 5 months so maybe it isn't cycled properly. I have added them tablets ypu ger to speed things up. /I think they are called Bactozmin or something like that. Maybe I dont give enough food for the fish. at the moment I have:
7 Neon Tetras
1 common plec
5 Guppies and 3 fry
1 Congo tetra (need to get another 3 maybe)
1 Fire Gourami

Im sure all these fish do create a lot of waste but every water changes I try get all the waste fro the bottom. Even though its quite hard with sand!

Algae: Only slight blobs on the glass which I use a magnet to clean

 

[Miss Wiggle]

unless your getting readings for ammonia or nitrIte then your tank is cycled.

low nitrate readings are a good thing, you obviously have a good balance of stocking, filtration and maintenance. just keep doing what your doing as it's obviously working well