Nitrate Levels In Tank

[molitor75]

My fish don't appear to be bothered, but since doing a rather large water change and boiling the gravel to kill off unwanted snails i've had a bit of a stench going on. I'm thinking its the snails that have decomposed (not a nice thought).....

Anyway i've done the usual tests. Ammonia is 0.0mg/l nitrate is 0.25mg/l PH is 7.5

Other than worrying about the smell and changing water and making sure the tests are ok should I be concerned about anything else?

I was told by the guy at the local aquarium that if I did more than regular changes then the smell should disappear after a week to ten days.

 

[@ombomb]

How old is your nitrate test kit?

That reading is extremely low and I would doubt the accuracy of the test kit.

How long ago did you boil your gravel ( )?

What's in the tank?

What's the tank volume?

 

[edgun88]

Hmmmm...that IS a really low nitrate level. You might have killed some of your bacteria.

 

[WILDER]

Never do large water changes bad for fish it stresses them out as you are altering the enviroment to fast.
Get the snails out fast if there decomposing they are toxic to fish.
What does the tank smell of sulphur or rotten egg smell.

 

[TerraDreamer]

Adding some charcoal to your filter will help sweeten the water.

 

[andywg]

Never do large water changes bad for fish it stresses them out as you are altering the enviroment to fast.

This is absolutely wrong.

So long as the new water is dechlorinated and the same temp and pH as the tank then you can change 100%. A number of breeders do regular changes of 50-80% to keep the tanks in the best possible conditions.

 

[molitor75]

If I had to link the smell to anything then I would say it has a very mild rotten egg smell to it but then again i've smelt rotten eggs before and its not that close. To me it smelt like what it might do if there were snails that were decomposing. I've been using Nutrafin cycle and easybalance for well over a year and my fish are accustomed to large water changes (if they can get accustomed?) I did a 40% water change two days ago and the smell isn't too bad.

My fish appear active, they are feeding well and swimming well.

Could it be the fact that i'm using easy balance which is giving me the low nitrate reading? My testing kit is 3 months old, i'm using an interpet test kit.