Better than what?
How's this for an idea: Instead of spending $$$ on chemical additives which can only accumulate in your tank, why not do as everyone else & simply do a weekly water change. Afterall, this is what a weekly water change is for.
Andy
how do you know he's not already doing good water change's? Your post did have an underlying assumption he isnt. But i hate presuming as "assume" can make an
ass out of u & me LOL,
good advice here, but i kind of see where Andy (New Boy) is coming from though, but its sound advice and no harm done, no offence Underwurlde and i wasnt going to make this point considering people i respect including you have felt all is well in the thread, but i am sure you guys are open minded enough to handle my take on it.
As for my take on the actual issue LOL, am i right in thinking these additives for nitrate removal only work in "certain" conditions regarding the level of available oxygen in the tank? Bet theres loads of info on the forum already about this though
As for Nitrate in the tap water being 50 mg/l where do you live (London i read your profile), the legal max is 50mg/l i believe?, but then again if you raise it with the water board that yours is at the legal max and you want some reassurance, once you tell them you tested it with a fish testing kit, they will fall off their chair laughing, thats how i felt when i phoned my water company LOL, and i can see where their coming from, nitrate test kits are pretty hit and miss sometimes (in my experience), escpecially with results over the 20-40 mg/l region (colour charts tend to get hard to read for me anyway). Actually my concern was that i had 0.25 mg/l nitrite in my tap water.
I am in this thread, as it wasnt long ago my Nitrate tap water seemed to hover around the 40 mg/l mark, but it seems to be 10-20 these days. I have heard of "seasonal variations" with nitrate in tap water, but i think my tap water has behaved itself from a Nitrate perspective for over 2-whole summers now and about 12 months total. I live in North London.
I do feel for Andy (New Boy), as if your tap water is high in Nitrate its damn frustrating trying to get tank levels down, as even if you can satisfy yourself the levels are not harmful to your fish, there is still something inside most of us that drives us to reduce all this readings to as low as possible (where is for an obsessive complulsive like me!)
But also like Wolf said it aint neccesarily an issue, readings in the 50 mg/l region and nitrate can be made out to be an "evil" sometimes when as far as i am aware the available research doesn't back up claims that some make, insisting nitrate needs to be below 50mg/l and perhaps never even getting above 20 mg/l!!! Some exceptions may be certain identified sensitive fish as Wolf said.
But i for one, will still waging the war against Nitrate as far as i can.
My Community Planted has readings as low as 5mg/l sometimes, but my Cichlid tanks hover at 40-60mg/l
I personally would spend my available fish budget on products other than short-term, quick acting nitrate removal, unless you were going for a longer term solution such as RO or something.