Nitrates Are Too High

[Queen Bee]

I have two tanks. One is a 29 gallon and the other a 45 gallon. Tanks have been up and running for about a year. After several problems with ph, things have been going along great. Lately fish have randomly been dying. Most are new additions, few are the older fish. Some of the fish in the 45 also appear to be panting.

I do weekly water changes of 25% water. I use the gravel vac to get into the debris. I have a few plants, but fish always eat them.

Ammonia is 0 Nitrite is 0 Nitrate is 80 Ph is 8

I have been doing more frequent water changes. Every couple of days and taking out more than 25%. When I test the water couple of hours later, it doesn't appear to have changed much at all. Colour is a bit lighter in the test tube, but not enough to make the level drop.

I don't want to take out all water and lose my stock. I am also not wanting to cause undue stress with nitrate shock by changing the level too quickly. However it doesn't appear to change at all.

Would using reverse osmosis water be more beneficial in bringing down my numbers. My tap water does read ammonia and I am thinking it is just going to keep turning into nitrates.


What to do?? Tired of changing so much water, and poor from buying new fish to replace dying ones!

 

[Curiosity101]

Have you tested your tap water for Nitrates?

How high is the level of ammonia in the tapwater?

 

[spectrum]

pH
What sort of fish do you have!? Unless they are lake mbuna/Tanganyika (I think) or marine (in which case this is the wrong section) then the pH is almost certainly the problem, a pH of 8 is pretty high and not many fish will thank you for it at all. Have you got Ocean rock, limestone or something similar in there (Containing calcium)? If so take it out, that will be what is raising the pH, It is of course possible that you have a naturally high pH in you area, in which case you will need to bring it down, bogwood for example will help to do this.

Nitrates
Do you vacuum your gravel? It could be that you have a large build up of fish waste somewhere hidden.

Hope this helps

 

[Queen Bee]

There is no nitrate in the tap water and the ammonia is around .5

The ph is high, but I've had the water tested and there are no buffers in the water. I lost 3 tanks full of fish due to the lack of buffers. The water turns so acidic that it kills all the fish in one shot. I added coral to correct the problem then it went too high. Took coral out and added bogwood and peat after several months, no noticable change in the readings.

The fish in the tank is an assortment of livebearers and tetras. The other tank is all gourami.


I vacuum the gravel once a week. I even move the decorations and plants to get all the gravel cleaned.

 

[MewMew42]

if the ammonia is 0.5 then that will be your problem

also with your PH of being 8 the ammonia is even more toxic to the fish

 

[coldcazzie]

You're nitrate being high wont be a problem - most fish can stand nitrates of several hundred ppm that have built up slowly without showing any adverse effects. If your nitrate was several hundred then slowly bringing it down by doing small daily water changes would be a good idea, for example if you wanted to add more stock, but it doesn't sound like you're suffering from OTS which is what that kind of thing would be associated with - it sounds like you're just on about your regular maintainance.

When you say there are no buffers, do you have a test kit to test the water hardness and show us the results? If you've been fiddling with the hardness by adding coral and then taking it out again etc etc then that will probably be a bigger problem for the fish.

A tap ammonia reading of .5 might be a problem too, although your filter should be able to cope with that as long as your water changes aren't too large I think.

RO would bring down your water hardness and so probably bring down your pH, but it wouldn't do anything to your nitrate level that a normal water change wouldn't do (excepting the ammonia of course).