Nitrates In Tap Water

[Fish bubbles]

Hi all,

Am having an issue with my Nitrates, currently at 40-50ppm. My tank has reached its full cycle now but the nitrates are still high. I have done water changes and regular maintenance but they still remain high. I started to investigate by reading on the forums and discovered that the nitrates could actually be coming from my water source. I did a water test and found out that i roughly have 40ppm in my tap water, which is frustrating!

How can i reduce the amount of nitrates am putting into the tank. I have also seen that plants can help reduce the levels but how much?

Thanks for looking

 

[Teacher Martyn]

Hi all,

Am having an issue with my Nitrates, currently at 40-50ppm. My tank has reached its full cycle now but the nitrates are still high. I have done water changes and regular maintenance but they still remain high. I started to investigate by reading on the forums and discovered that the nitrates could actually be coming from my water source. I did a water test and found out that i roughly have 40ppm in my tap water, which is frustrating!

How can i reduce the amount of nitrates am putting into the tank. I have also seen that plants can help reduce the levels but how much?

Thanks for looking

I'm in the South-East and have the same problem. Our water might even come from the same source.

I do find that with maintenance it doesn't go much higher than that so that might be to do with my plants.

Martyn

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Fish bubbles.
Nitrates as such are not a problem at 40 ppm. If you do a water change to reduce below 60 ppm each time your fish will be fine. A rise of 20 ppm above tap water is our real target value for a water change. If you actually want to get rid of nitrates, it can be done. A heavily planted tank is regularly fed nitrates by people using a high tech plant approach because not enough can be generated by the fish and wastes. Nitrates are fertilizer. When I ran a high tech tank with CO2, I actually added a low dose of nitrates to my water daily, just to keep up with the plants.

I no longer do that because I decided I didn't like all the work involved in a high tech planted tank. It wasn't just the fertilizer dosing that was taking a toll, it was also all the weeding to keep plant growth under control. The fish did need a place to swim after all. I have converted to a NPT approach which still grows plants well but not quite as fast and weeding gets done by selling excess plants at club auctions.

 

[Aqua Tom]

I am from the south east as well & my tapwater nitrate is 40ppm.


Dont panic.



Tom

 

[CezzaXV]

I have heard that nitrates don't become a problem for fish until they reach around 300ppm, and even that's for the more sensitive species. Treat 40ppm as your new zero, and make sure that your nitrate doesn't go too far above that.

 

[Wills]

Im in Yorkshire and I have 40ppm nitrate as well. I believe its to do with the nature of the drain that the water company pumps from.

Wills

 

[Fish bubbles]

Many thanks guys,

i feel much better about the whole nitrates process. I went to my local fish store and they sell there own nitrates free water but if you say i shouldn't worry too much than that's fine with me.

Regards

Fish Bubbles.

 

[Wills]

Thats whats called RO water which for me is just an unnecessary complication for fresh water tanks. And a big expense as well.

If you are worried going forward you can get nitrate filters which are a slow process but just strip out the nitrate in the tap water before you add it to the tank but most only work 100% at trickle pace. You can also get nitrate removing pads for your filters but these need replacing frequently and would help but Im not sure how the level would fluctuate in tank? As if they did their job 100% and got rid of all nitrate you would be adding nitrate to the tank at water change but then in some ways that would remove the point of water changes?

I think so long as we keep up with regular changes were fine.

Wills