Nitrates Not Going Down

[adpgt]

Tank has been setup for 2 years now and not once have I cleaned the gravel until about a month ago when I realized that I should be doing water changes and gravel cleans. So after a month of intense gravel cleaning and water changes, nitrates are still at 160ppm.

What gives?

Am I not producing enough beneficial bacteria? Is my filter bad?

 

[deftuch]

Tank has been setup for 2 years now and not once have I cleaned the gravel until about a month ago when I realized that I should be doing water changes and gravel cleans. So after a month of intense gravel cleaning and water changes, nitrates are still at 160ppm.

What gives?

Am I not producing enough beneficial bacteria? Is my filter bad?

test your tap water. it may have high levels of nitrate already in it. also therer are many great products out there that eradicate nitrates from your tank. if your tap water has nitrates already in it, you should add it to the new water before adding to the tank. if not the other way round. and when you say still at 160ppm, was it at 160ppm before you started doing the water changes. anycase. you will most likely have nitrate gass trapped under the gravel so when you are vaccuming it you are releasing that trapped nitrate into the tank. do bubbles come up from your gravel if you disturb it? key points here are. remove nitrates from tap water if required/add nitrtate reducers to tank regardless/keep vaccing and doing water changes, youl get there eventually

 

[hogan53]

Purchase some fast growing plants they will consume the nitrate as a fertilzer.
I wouldn't trust hobby test kits their not very accurate.
hoggie

 

[SombreroBanana]

Tank has been setup for 2 years now and not once have I cleaned the gravel until about a month ago when I realized that I should be doing water changes and gravel cleans. So after a month of intense gravel cleaning and water changes, nitrates are still at 160ppm.

What gives?

Am I not producing enough beneficial bacteria? Is my filter bad?

Nitrate gas is probably built up in your gravel. Unplug your filter and do 50-75% water changes, as this will bring your nitrates down faster. Make sure you're gravel-vacuuming while doing this.
And nitrate is not processed into something else. Your beneficial bacteria only processes ammonia to nitrite, and nitrite to nitrate. Your filter is fine.

 

[msasa19]

i have the same issue, my tap water is around the 40ppm mark, so not much i can do :\

 

[JenCliBee]

Have you tried the advice given in your previous 3 threads regarding the matter?.... you mentioned you were using test strips and you were advised to obtain a test from a liquid based kit due to the strips being wildly inaccurate... have you done this?.


With all the work you have done...water changes, full intense gravel clean etc etc, you would NOT have the same readings. Have you tested your tap water again as per your previous thread replies have advised?

 

[deftuch]

Tank has been setup for 2 years now and not once have I cleaned the gravel until about a month ago when I realized that I should be doing water changes and gravel cleans. So after a month of intense gravel cleaning and water changes, nitrates are still at 160ppm.

What gives?

Am I not producing enough beneficial bacteria? Is my filter bad?

Nitrate gas is probably built up in your gravel. Unplug your filter and do 50-75% water changes, as this will bring your nitrates down faster. Make sure you're gravel-vacuuming while doing this.
And nitrate is not processed into something else. Your beneficial bacteria only processes ammonia to nitrite, and nitrite to nitrate. Your filter is fine.

did you seriously just reccomend turning the filter off. for how long exactly?

 

[SombreroBanana]

Tank has been setup for 2 years now and not once have I cleaned the gravel until about a month ago when I realized that I should be doing water changes and gravel cleans. So after a month of intense gravel cleaning and water changes, nitrates are still at 160ppm.

What gives?

Am I not producing enough beneficial bacteria? Is my filter bad?

Nitrate gas is probably built up in your gravel. Unplug your filter and do 50-75% water changes, as this will bring your nitrates down faster. Make sure you're gravel-vacuuming while doing this.
And nitrate is not processed into something else. Your beneficial bacteria only processes ammonia to nitrite, and nitrite to nitrate. Your filter is fine.

did you seriously just reccomend turning the filter off. for how long exactly?

While he's doing the water changes. That's what I do, because my filter intake isn't very deep down so my filter starts making gurgling noises.

 

[deftuch]

Tank has been setup for 2 years now and not once have I cleaned the gravel until about a month ago when I realized that I should be doing water changes and gravel cleans. So after a month of intense gravel cleaning and water changes, nitrates are still at 160ppm.

What gives?

Am I not producing enough beneficial bacteria? Is my filter bad?

Nitrate gas is probably built up in your gravel. Unplug your filter and do 50-75% water changes, as this will bring your nitrates down faster. Make sure you're gravel-vacuuming while doing this.
And nitrate is not processed into something else. Your beneficial bacteria only processes ammonia to nitrite, and nitrite to nitrate. Your filter is fine.

did you seriously just reccomend turning the filter off. for how long exactly?

While he's doing the water changes. That's what I do, because my filter intake isn't very deep down so my filter starts making gurgling noises.

oh right i see, yeah i do the same. my internal i turn off, but i can keep my externals on

 

[the_lock_man]

If you've not done water changes for 2 years, then your nitrate level would be way off the top of the scale of anything a test kit would measure.

When you say a month of intense gravel cleaning, how intense is that, as I'm assuming you're not spending every waking-hour doing it. It may well be that you've not done sufficient changes to get the nitrate level down to a measurable level. Equally it could be that if you're using test strips, and they are also 2 years old, they could well be contaminated, and even less accurate than they usually are.

 

[phantomlink]

Also remember if you have fish in the tank you cant do massive water changes every day/week or else they will get stressed out and die because their water parameters are changing so rapidly, its called Old Tank Syndrome or OTS

 

[the_lock_man]

Also remember if you have fish in the tank you cant do massive water changes every day/week or else they will get stressed out and die because their water parameters are changing so rapidly, its called Old Tank Syndrome or OTS

Excellent point.

 

[adpgt]

-Tap water nitrates are next to nothing
-I have taken the water to a LFS and they use the liquid drops to test the water
- When I clean the gravel now, the gravel vac doesn't suck anything up but water now. There is nothing my gravel. Saying that, the cleaning was pretty intense lol
- I don't see bubbles when I disturb the gravel

 

[CezzaXV]

I would guess that 160ppm is the maximum level of nitrate your test kit will detect. It will turn that colour for anything 160ppm upwards. Say you had 1000ppm (which seems insane, but more than possible if you hadn't changed the water in two years. One 25% change will leave you with 750ppm. Another 25% change will leave you with 562ppm. Another 25% change will leave you with 421ppm. Another 25% change will leave you with 316ppm. That's four theoretical water changes and it's still nowhere near enough to get the water below a level where the colour is different, and that's assuming there is no nitrate in your tap water. Just keep going with the water changes. You said there was next to no nitrates in your tap water, so just keep up with the daily water changes and it WILL come down. It can't not come down.

 

[adpgt]

Will do and thanks!