Nitrate Spike Or Different Test Method?

[RainboWBacoN420]

Okay, so a few days ago I tested my 55 gallon, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites and 0-3 nitrates. I've been reading that many users say to shake the nitrate bottle for at least 2 minutes.
Now what I should of done was not shake the bottle and test, and do another test after shaking the bottle. But I went with shaking the bottle vigorously for about a minute or so, and the results came back as 30-40 ppm! Ammonia and nitrite are still zero, I went with the same method testing those as well.
So I'm wondering if it's because I shook the bottles or if its a nitrate spike. The fish all appear fine, happy as ever, normal behaviour as usual. I had just done a 15-20% water change a few days ago, didn't dose ferts since Sunday, which was exactly a week ago. I tested the parameters right before the water change, just to clarify.
I'm thinking about running some activated carbon to get rid of some of the nitrates? That or I should do another water change. I don't want the nitrate levels to rise any higher.

Thanks!~

 

[gmc1]

If this is your first time shaking bottle so much there's a good chance that's what your actual nitrate readings are.i would do a larger change and do exactly the same.maybe test your tap water too.

 

[fluttermoth]

Carbon won't absorb nitrate (nor ammonia or nitrite either, come to that).

I wouldn't worry too much about that level, unless you keep very sensitive fish. It might indicate you do need to do larger water changes though; it depends what the level in your tap water is, obviously you won't be able to get it lower than that very easily.

But most people recommend doing much larger sized water changes than yours, for precisely this reason. I do 50 or 75% at a time in most of my tanks; smaller than that's not worth bothering with, IMO!

 

[RainboWBacoN420]

The thing about major water changes, is that I really shouldn't do them as big as I'd like...
I love in California of the U.S., our state has been in a pretty bad drought lately, so I've haven't been doing big water changes. Even changes of 10 gallons is pushing it with water usage. On a 55 gallon tank, doing a 75% water change would most likely look terrible on our water bill...

I can however, do a small water change, again. Could I leave the nitrates to be absorbed by the plants? My tank is heavily planted. Should I also hold off on ferts in the mean time?
Sorry for all the questions, I've never had trouble with nitrates before, or maybe I have this whole time? I'm not sure...

 

[gmc1]

I think you should be ok if that's the case.just keep an eye on them.I would still personally use ferts.

 

[Byron]

Fluttermoth mentioned tap water nitrates...have you tested the tap water alone, and are there nitrates?  If zero, and nitrates of 30-40 ppm are occurring solely within the aquarium, I would rectify the cause.  Water changes and plants will help but not completely if the bioload is creating nitrates at this high a level.
 
Byron.

 

[RainboWBacoN420]

Fluttermoth mentioned tap water nitrates...have you tested the tap water alone, and are there nitrates?  If zero, and nitrates of 30-40 ppm are occurring solely within the aquarium, I would rectify the cause.  Water changes and plants will help but not completely if the bioload is creating nitrates at this high a level.
 
Byron.

I checked my city parameter report, the report is still from 2015 for 2014. The nitrate levels are 45 ppm according to the report.
Should I cut back on feeding? I can do small water changes every week, I have a feeling the nitrates are this high because my cut back on water changes due to California's drought problem. I've been just topping off the water lately, and I thought my parameters were always good, but I fear my tests have been inaccurate this whole time! At least my ammonia and nitrites are at zero. 

 

[RainboWBacoN420]

Later tonight, when I return home, I'll conduct a nitrate test of my own on the tap water.
Now I'm not sure if that's the cause, but would using R/O water be a better choice from now on? I really don't like using tap water to replenish my tanks. 
 
This might seem like a stupid question, but if I were to switch to using R/O, could this have a negative effect on my tanks since I've only been using tap? I can't think of any reason why it would except maybe altering the pH or hardness over a period of time if I use the R/O for weekly small water changes.

 

[StevenF]

Using RO water would eliminate nutrient fluctuations caused by tap water.  However if you have plants in your aquarium you would have to start using fertilizer otherwise they would die.  Even if you don't have plants you would have to add calcium / magnesium carbonate to your water and maybe iodine to ensure any invertebrates  (shrimp, snails) don't die.  Also RO systems have two outputs clean water and a mineral rich brine.  The mineral rich brine is typically discarded.  So getting a RO system might increase your water use.  
 
I wouldn't decrease your water cycling to conserve water,  Doing so could cause mineral levels in your aquarium to increase which could cause Algae or make your water unhealthy for your fish.  Besides some of the biggest water wasters are long showers, irrigation, and water leaks.  You will likely save more than 55 gallons a week by addressing water use in these areas first.  I also live in California and my advise on saving water is to reuse your aquarium water by using it to water plants and using it to lean windows, your car and anything else you an think of.

 

[RainboWBacoN420]

Using RO water would eliminate nutrient fluctuations caused by tap water.  However if you have plants in your aquarium you would have to start using fertilizer otherwise they would die. 

I dose ferts weekly, that shouldn't become a problem.
 
 

Using RO water would eliminate nutrient fluctuations caused by tap water.  However if you have plants in your aquarium you would have to start using fertilizer otherwise they would die.  Even if you don't have plants you would have to add calcium / magnesium carbonate to your water and maybe iodine to ensure any invertebrates  (shrimp, snails) don't die.  Also RO systems have two outputs clean water and a mineral rich brine.  The mineral rich brine is typically discarded.  So getting a RO system might increase your water use.  

I was thinking about just purchasing R/O water from my job. We get a pretty nice discount, and since I'm always going to be there, I'll always have many chances to pick up R/O water when needed. I would definitely like to make an R/O system, maybe some time later down the road, perhaps. 
What importance does iodine have for inverts? I have never heard a correlation between iodine and inverts.
 
 

  I also live in California and my advise on saving water is to reuse your aquarium water by using it to water plants and using it to lean windows, your car and anything else you an think of.

I've doing this for a while, actually. The lawn is doing great!

 

[StevenF]

 
 
I dose ferts weekly, that shouldn't become a problem.

Fertilization requirements are different for RO water than tap water.  Most fertilizers are made with the assumpiton that the user is using tap water.  Tap water is often delivered through copper pipes so many don't have copper.  Others don'thave calcium and magnesium because tap water almost always has it.  For RO systems you need to fertilize the RO water with all the micro nutrients.
 
I origninally started using Aqueon plant food and at first the results looked good.  But over the next year I gradually realized the plants were not doing as well as they should have been.  I later concluded that the problem was copper which was not in the bottle.  I then tried a bttle of Flourish comprehensive which has copper plus some potassium and nitrogen.  Worked well Added nitrogen fertilizer from Seachem (potassium nitrate) and that got my phosphates down.  Everything looked good.
 
However now I am adding potassium nitrate, potassium iodine, plus the potassium in the comprehensive.  Maybe too much potassium?  And in fact plant growth has slowed and Ph has gone up.  all are possibly explained by excess Potassium.  I have reset the tank with several large water changes and things are returning back to normal.  But I have not yet been able to get any moss to grow in my aquarium. Even Java moss will not grow.  Not sure why.
 
So don't assume your current fertilizers will work with RO water.

 
 
What importance does iodine have for inverts? I have never heard a correlation between iodine and inverts.

 
All animal including invertebrates have thyroxine in there bodies.  Thyroxine is an iodine containing hormone that is essential in all animals and invertebrates.  I noticed my shrimp were getting less and less active.  Did a search in google for something similar and found a forum mentioning iodine.  In my medicine cabinet  I had a bottle iodine (actually a potassium iodine, a salt.  and added a very small amount .  My shrimp were back to normal the next day and have stayed that way since.  Algae also has iodine in it but no one knows why or how algae uses it.  Lack of iodine also does not appear to slow algae growth indicating it is not an  essential plant nutrient.  However iodine and thyroxine does show up in all animals.

 

[RainboWBacoN420]

Very interesting, thank you for informing about iodine importance. I had no idea... I'm going to look further into that.

And I use API: Leaf Zone (not a full dose) along side SeaChem: Comprehensive (full dose).
I use Leaf Zone to make up for the lack of potassium in Comprehensive.

I compared Aqueons Plant Food to SeaChem: Comprehensive and I thought Comprehensive provided a better nutrient bulk. Ad I found that Leaf Zone either lacks in a lot of nutrients that should be in there, but even on their site, only a small chunk of information is available as to what's really in there... Which in my opinion is really sketchy.
After I'm done using up my fertilizers, I think I'll be switching over to dry fertilizers. Ad I hear those are ideal and can provide proper macro, micro and trace elements? I hear a lot of good things out of dry ferts.

That's odd that Java Moss can't grow in your tank. A funny thing actually, I got rid of my Java Moss a long time ago because it was getting messy and wasn't looking that good in a few spots. Mainly the spots in direct light. So I tossed it, boiled the driftwood it was wrapped on and after about a few weeks, Java Moss was growing back not only on the driftwood it was on, but the neighboring driftwood as well! And it's looking vividly green! It's not a huge clump, though. Just green vines of moss going across the wood. It looks... Interesting. I'm not even going to bother trying to remove it.

I'm going to look into the R/O and fertilizer correlation. I'm glad you mentioned that. Would simply using R/O to just top off the tank be okay? That way I'm not introducing more nutrients or anything else that may be coming from the tap water? I honestly don't trust my tap very much, and would loke to switch over to using purified water.
I also conducted a nitrate test on my tap water. Results came back as 0 ppm!
So the nitrates must be from the end result of the cycle. It makes sense that my tank is high in nitrates, though. I don't do many water changes as I test my parameters weekly and they always came back clean! But now that I've shaken the bottles, it's clear that I've been getting false readings this whole time!

 

[gmc1]

I think everyone has done this with the nitrate bottles
Just remember when making your own ro water you are making around3x waste water for good.in a drought area no doubt it would be recycled anyway but it probably still equates to what you would be doing from a large tap water water change anyway.

 

[Byron]

I will pick up on a couple of items from the recent posts, starting with the nitrates.  In the US, federal regulations prohibit nitrates above 10 ppm in drinking water, and even at this level they advise it not be used by infants or pregnant/nursing mothers.  The scale/unit they use is the N-N which is different from our aquarium kits that use total N.  So 10 ppm N-N is roughly 44 ppm with the API kit.  However, if the source (tap) water is zero, you're better.
 
RO water as someone mentions wastes gallons of water to produce the end water so this is not a road I would go down if you are concerned about water use.  We don't have the GH/KH/pH for your tap water, but if nitrates are zero you may not have an issue with the tap water.  Which brings us to nitrates in the aquarium.  These should be kept no higher than 20 ppm (using our test kits), and as low as possible is always better.  Fewer fish, less fish food, live plants and (of course) water changes will all achieve this.  You can reduce water change volumes by reducing the fish load and feeding, so if water conservation is an issue, fewer fish fed less in an aquarium will help, along with live plants especially fast growers that naturally use more, and floating plants are about the best in this aspect.
 
To fertilizers.  First off, the plant species and number of plants factor in to how much of what additive might be helpful.  As someone mentioned, most liquid plant fertilizer preparations are intended for "average" tap water so they may be minimal in the hard minerals (calcium, magnesium).  Some plants will not require much in the way of nutrients, beyond what occurs naturally from the fish foods.
 
API Leaf Zone is only iron and potassium, and there may be situations where this is sufficient.  The Aqueon product I do not know, but from the list of ingredients it may be sufficient.  The Seachem Flourish Comprehensive Supplement contains all required nutrients except for carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.  The micro nutrients are in proportion to what studies indicate aquatic plants require; the macros like calcium and magnesium are minimal because these often occur in tap water.  But generally speaking, Flourish Comp is a complete liquid additive.  Brightwell Aquatics FlorinMulti is nearly identical in this respect.
 
I have very soft tap water, around 7 ppm GH which is for all intent basically zero.  I use Flourish Comprehensive, and over a few years have found that reducing this a bit and adding Flourish Trace and Flourish Iron has improved things; plants respond a bit better, but more importantly problem algae has disappeared.  Using two doses of Flourish Comp alone in one tank caused brush algae within a couple weeks, but back to one dose and it disappeared; I repeated this experiment twice over a period of months, with the exact same results.  The point here is that there is a connection between algae and fertilizers, just as with light intensity and duration.  Finding the balance in your situation is the goal.
 
I have come to the realization that it is safer to add any of these products minimally as opposed to over-dosing, not only for the plants--an excess of certain nutrients will cause plants to shut down assimilation of some other nutrients--but for the fish.  Any substance added to the water will get inside the fish, via the gills or via osmosis through every cell.  I would be very careful adding iodine for this reason.  All of these minerals, like copper, iron, iodine, may well be necessary for life, but we know that they are also highly toxic if the level increases beyond a certain point.
 
Byron.

 

[StevenF]

 
 
Would simply using R/O to just top off the tank be okay?

That is OK and I do it myself.