Nitrate Problems Emergency

[martinglover]

Sorry for the duplicate, but only just found this forum

Hi all,

I have a tank which has been established for a while but recently moved house so is now 2 months in its new location. All has been fine until we went on holiday and put in (the correct amount according the the packet) a food block. Now, a week after we get back we have lost a couple of fish, and a number more are turning white and stressed looking.

We took a water sample in yesterday (Sunday) to our fish shop and he advised Nitrate levels are high (off the scale) and so the man in the fish shop said to stop feeding them and then bring another water sample in on Thursday. He said to do a water change and a gravel hoover/clean thing. I changed 10 litres of water (tank is 120 litres total) yesterday I have since done some browsing around the internet and had been given differing pieces of advice. Some say to do a water change every day until levels return to normal. Some say to add some salt. Some say add some bacteria (Neutrafin Cycle or similar) I'm really unsure of what to do next as I think I could do more harm than good.

In addition to this, I have ordered an external filter (Tetra ex700) which is delivered tomrrow. Should I wait before fitting this too, or will it help aid the cycle and get the water back to normal faster. (I will keep the internal filter in too). I have done another water change this evening of 10 litres as I'm going to follow the advice that makes most sense to me at the moment, but ANY help is appreciated! Can anyone assist as I want to protect my little guys as much as poss.

Yours in anticipation, Martin.

 

[mattlee]

Sorry for the duplicate, but only just found this forum

Hi all,

I have a tank which has been established for a while but recently moved house so is now 2 months in its new location. All has been fine until we went on holiday and put in (the correct amount according the the packet) a food block. Now, a week after we get back we have lost a couple of fish, and a number more are turning white and stressed looking.

We took a water sample in yesterday (Sunday) to our fish shop and he advised Nitrate levels are high (off the scale) and so the man in the fish shop said to stop feeding them and then bring another water sample in on Thursday. He said to do a water change and a gravel hoover/clean thing. I changed 10 litres of water (tank is 120 litres total) yesterday I have since done some browsing around the internet and had been given differing pieces of advice. Some say to do a water change every day until levels return to normal. Some say to add some salt. Some say add some bacteria (Neutrafin Cycle or similar) I'm really unsure of what to do next as I think I could do more harm than good.

In addition to this, I have ordered an external filter (Tetra ex700) which is delivered tomrrow. Should I wait before fitting this too, or will it help aid the cycle and get the water back to normal faster. (I will keep the internal filter in too). I have done another water change this evening of 10 litres as I'm going to follow the advice that makes most sense to me at the moment, but ANY help is appreciated! Can anyone assist as I want to protect my little guys as much as poss.

Yours in anticipation, Martin.

Hi Martin and welcome to the forum.

could you please let us know your tank maintenance routine?
after 2 years your tank will be very much cycled and mature. sorry if you already know this - nitrates are the end producy of the nitrogen cycle that occurs in the tanks filter, the fish waste and uneaten food produces ammonia, bacteria in your filter turns this into nitrite and then another bacteria turns this into nitrate. if you have live plants then they will use up some of the nitrates to grow etc but the only other way to remove them is to do water changes. its recommended to change about 25%, depending on stocking, per week. this also adds new elements that are in the water to help try and keep your fish healthy. if your nitrates are off the scale then i assume a water change hasnt been done for a while or you are seriously overstocked or feeding way too much! fish can tolerate nitrates up to quite a high amount with exception of some very sensitive fish like discus etc. even your tap water can contain nitrates mine is 10ppm but i have known people to have 60ppm from the tap of nitrate.... test your tap water to see what it is at. without live plants or chemicals you will never get it lower than the level in the tap water.
the bacteria in a bottle stuff is a complete waste of time, dont waste your money on it no matter how much the shop tells you that you need it. the external filter wont harm anything so you may as well fit it and it will cycle along side the existing filter in time.
in a tank of 120 litres you really need to be changing 30 litres a week using dechlorinator to protect your bacteria in the filter. if you have not been doing regular water changes then the fish will have become used to the water stats so increase the amounts changed so they can acclimatise slowly to cleaner water as this can have the same effect but in reverse.

 

[Guppy Games]

First post!

I have a similar problem that started after holiday feed.

My tank is only 6 months old.

After a holiday feed I started to get black algae over everything. I cleaned that off the decoration and cleaned the tank, probably too well, although I did keep over 50% of the water. I also gave the gravel a swill ... I know, I know ... now. So my bacteria levels are shot . Since then I have got a load of green algae in the tank and the nitrites have gone up.

Major change of water with repeated changes.

Struggling to keep the nitrites below 0.8, ammonia 0.5-10, nitrates 10-20, pH just below 7 to just above. I never had to do a thing with it before the whole time. I think that I'm just about on top of it and haven't lost one yet. Any advice/tips welcome!

My question: I stuck a bottom lying airbrick in as well to try and oxygenate a bit more for the bacteria and cos my guppies love playing in currents ... ...like the filtered water-in "waterfall" (even when the tank was perfect) ... is this a bad/good/indifferent thing? I don't want to make it worse.

Got some sporadically active Cories that keep the place tidy and are great fun actually. I love it when they sit on the bottom and you can see their ball out eyes moving to watch you. Also five danio who don't seem to mind anything very much - still darting about.

Lots of places for them to hide and chill out - they all seem to get on fine with each other as well.

 

[mattlee]

First post!

I have a similar problem that started after holiday feed.

My tank is only 6 months old.

After a holiday feed I started to get black algae over everything. I cleaned that off the decoration and cleaned the tank, probably too well, although I did keep over 50% of the water. I also gave the gravel a swill ... I know, I know ... now. So my bacteria levels are shot . Since then I have got a load of green algae in the tank and the nitrites have gone up.

Major change of water with repeated changes.

Struggling to keep the nitrites below 0.8, ammonia 0.5-10, nitrates 10-20, pH just below 7 to just above. I never had to do a thing with it before the whole time. I think that I'm just about on top of it and haven't lost one yet. Any advice/tips welcome!

My question: I stuck a bottom lying airbrick in as well to try and oxygenate a bit more for the bacteria and cos my guppies love playing in currents ... ...like the filtered water-in "waterfall" (even when the tank was perfect) ... is this a bad/good/indifferent thing? I don't want to make it worse.

Got some sporadically active Cories that keep the place tidy and are great fun actually. I love it when they sit on the bottom and you can see their ball out eyes moving to watch you. Also five danio who don't seem to mind anything very much - still darting about.

Lots of places for them to hide and chill out - they all seem to get on fine with each other as well.

if you have ammonia and nitrites then you need to do major water changes until they read 0 then keep an eye on the stats for a week or so.
holiday feeds are not a good thing as the amount of uneaten food causes the ammonia levels to rise giving you a mini cycle.

 

[martinglover]

Hi Martin and welcome to the forum.

could you please let us know your tank maintenance routine?
after 2 years your tank will be very much cycled and mature. sorry if you already know this - nitrates are the end producy of the nitrogen cycle that occurs in the tanks filter, the fish waste and uneaten food produces ammonia, bacteria in your filter turns this into nitrite and then another bacteria turns this into nitrate. if you have live plants then they will use up some of the nitrates to grow etc but the only other way to remove them is to do water changes. its recommended to change about 25%, depending on stocking, per week. this also adds new elements that are in the water to help try and keep your fish healthy. if your nitrates are off the scale then i assume a water change hasnt been done for a while or you are seriously overstocked or feeding way too much! fish can tolerate nitrates up to quite a high amount with exception of some very sensitive fish like discus etc. even your tap water can contain nitrates mine is 10ppm but i have known people to have 60ppm from the tap of nitrate.... test your tap water to see what it is at. without live plants or chemicals you will never get it lower than the level in the tap water.
the bacteria in a bottle stuff is a complete waste of time, dont waste your money on it no matter how much the shop tells you that you need it. the external filter wont harm anything so you may as well fit it and it will cycle along side the existing filter in time.
in a tank of 120 litres you really need to be changing 30 litres a week using dechlorinator to protect your bacteria in the filter. if you have not been doing regular water changes then the fish will have become used to the water stats so increase the amounts changed so they can acclimatise slowly to cleaner water as this can have the same effect but in reverse.

Hi Mattlee

Thank you for you advice. It kind of goes along with my thoughts and that regular water changes are what are required. I'm going to do another water change tonight and this will mean that there has been 30 litres changed over 3 days. Hopefully that will help lower the levels but we shall see.

Do you think it is worth getting some live plants - I did buy some a few weeks ago but they did not look too healthy after a week or so and started to turn brown. The guy in the shop said to remove these as they will poison the water more.


Many thanks,

Martin.

 

[Curiosity101]

If your nitrates were off the scale this makes me think that they were 100+

As matt said, what is your normal water change routine? You should be aiming to keep your nitrates around 10-15ppm above your tap water imbetween changes. This is for a couple of reasons 1) It's better for the fish to be in regularly refreshed water, by changing water you don't just take stuff out, you refresh lots of minerals and salts that the fish need. 2)If you get ill and the tank maintenance has to be scrapped for a couple of weeks this gives your fish the best chance of coming through it absolutely fine.

Now down to what you've done... 10l and a % of 120l is 8.3% (the average recommended change is 20-30%)
So lets say you had 100ppm of nitrates, having removed 8.3% of the water and replaced with tap water (which in this case we will presume has no nitrates in it though it probably does).
Then you have lowered the level to 91.7ppm (100 - (8.3% of 100))

Now you did another 8.3% and lowered it to 84ppm (91.7 - (8.3% of 91.7)

Then you did another 8.3% and lowered it to 77ppm (you get the jist lol)

Anyhoo, you can see that even IF your tap water was at 0ppm for nitrates, which it probably isn't. And even if your nitrates were only at 100, which if they're off the scale they're probably higher. Then you've barely put a dint in the level of nitrates in the tank.

If you'd done a few 30% changes then you'd be seeing a much better ending value.
In your position right now I would do two larger water changes of 50%+ so basically you're at least halving the nitrate value each time.

As for plants. They may well have been dying due to a lack of nutrients (remember all those minerals and salts I said you add when you do a water change). Well if the tank has run low then the plants will have nothing to grow with. Get the tank stats in order and then definitely try again with plants! I would never be without real plants in my tank. They're good for the fish and when you have extra you can often sell them on. Win win in my opinion

 

[mattlee]

very well put curiosity

just dont forget to test your tap water to get an idea of what the nitrate level is and as curiosity said try to keep the levels about 10-15 ppm above the tap content or lower if possible.
it really is worth trying plants again they are not easy things to get established sometimes but when it works they really do look much much better and natural and help reduce nitrate levels
just double check plant species before buying to make sure they can survive in your water stats and heat etc. also if plants have white on the leaves then they are not true aquatic plants that live submerged

 

[martinglover]

Cheers guys,

I'll give all the suggestions a go. Many thanks.