Nitrates problem

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Naughts

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Hi all,
I struggle to keep nitrates down, My tap water has 23ppm. Colin advocates conditioning water with floating plants before water changes. Another member mentioned they bought a wheelie bin for water storage. So I'm thinking about buying a 60 litre storage crate on wheels and some floating plants and keep it in the conservarory, then wheel it in for water changes.
It would be out of the way in the conservatory but temperatures are a bit extreme for the plants so maybe put a heater in (I have a spare 50 watt) for the cold at night and not use it in the summer because of the heat? I'm in the UK so temperate weather.
Would a week be long enough for the floating plants to work their magic because I would need all the water for one water change?
Thanks for any advice:)
 
If you have lots of plants and give them good light, they can remove the nitrates in 24 hours.

Don't try to move plastic storage containers with water in because they break unless you use the real heavy duty type.
 
I am doubtful that plants will achieve much here. You might have some benefit with very high light (to drive photosynthesis) and then adding the other nutrients daily to balance. But ordinarily, such as in a planted tank, plants do not remove much nitrate.

Having said that, if you decide to set this up, it would be beneficial to report back to the forum on what it achieved.

Normally, as those with high nitrate in their source water will attest, the only effective method is through suitable filtration. AbbeysDad has gone through this with success so he will likely post here.
 
I agree. I have very high nitrates in my tap water and tried numerous solutions over the years. I have never managed to reduce nitrates in a stocked aquarium using plants alone. This may be possible in an empty (of livestock) container but I have not tried this. Currently my plants do successfully prevent the nitrates from going up. This is partly due to the number of plants and partly due to the good habits I had to develop when my levels were so high.
 
Currently my plants do successfully prevent the nitrates from going up. This is partly due to the number of plants and partly due to the good habits I had to develop when my levels were so high.

It may be of interest to explain for others why this occurs. Aquatic plants obviously need nitrogen as a macro nutrient, but studies have shown that they prefer ammonium (ammonia) over nitrite and nitrate. So in an aquarium with fish, they will quite rapidly (depending upon the growth habits) take up ammonia/ammonium, and only resort to nitrite and nitrate when there is insufficient ammonia/ammonium to supply their needs. And this is balanced with other nutrients which have to be available, and light which must be of sufficient intensity and suitable spectrum to drive photosynthesis beyond this point.

The reason is one of saving energy by the plants. Taking up nitrite or nitrate requires more energy to use the nitrogen because the plants must convert it back into ammonium. So they turn to nitrite/nitrate as a "last resort" in a sense, which is why there is so little noticeable loss.

Nitrate control in the average balanced aquarium with plants is because most of the ammonia/ammonium is taken up by the plants, not the nitrifying bacteria; plants are faster than bacteria in their uptake. And because plants do not produce nitrite or nitrate as a by-product unlike the nitrifying bacteria, those will naturally be much lower with plants. It is possible to have a well-planted tank with zero nitrates, but as most of us stock more fish, nitrates tend to still remain very low. My tanks have always been in the 0 to 5 ppm range.

In case anyone wonders, I mention nitrite and nitrate above because there is some evidence that plants will turn to nitrite first rather than nitrate, when ammonium is lacking. But no one should trust this to deal with nitrite, as more work needs to be done in this area.
 
I am doubtful that plants will achieve much here. You might have some benefit with very high light (to drive photosynthesis) and then adding the other nutrients daily to balance. But ordinarily, such as in a planted tank, plants do not remove much nitrate.

Having said that, if you decide to set this up, it would be beneficial to report back to the forum on what it achieved.

Normally, as those with high nitrate in their source water will attest, the only effective method is through suitable filtration. AbbeysDad has gone through this with success so he will likely post here.
Mmm...I don't want to buy a light, just use sunlight but as it's already Autumn I might not get enough for good growth. But I won't lose much by trying.
 
I agree. I have very high nitrates in my tap water and tried numerous solutions over the years. I have never managed to reduce nitrates in a stocked aquarium using plants alone. This may be possible in an empty (of livestock) container but I have not tried this. Currently my plants do successfully prevent the nitrates from going up. This is partly due to the number of plants and partly due to the good habits I had to develop when my levels were so high.
What levels do you achieve? I think I have good habits and a reasonable amount of plants but it's subjective.I have as high as 40ppm before a weekly water change :/
 
I concur - As mentioned, plants generally prefer ammonia over nitrates. They indirectly reduce nitrate generation by using ammonia, but even fast growing floating plants seem to do little to reduce tank nitrates - so I also doubt that they will do much to solve this problem.
I'll spare members/readers a recap of my nitrate fight and cut to the chase.
I pre-filter water for water changes through API Nitra-Zorb - sold in pouches (intended to be used in filters) it is a resin that adsorbs ammonia and nitrates and is rechargeable many, many times using non-iodized salt water (You can use aquarium salt or regular table salt that does not contain iodine).

The use life of the product pouches is not very long if used directly in the aquarium as detritus coats the surfaces. (I do not know if the product can be reclaimed with bleach/water like Seachem Purigen). HOWEVER, I have found that when filtering clean fresh water, the resin lasts and lasts. Now I ended up re-purposing an API Tap Water Filter, but it has been discontinued. But before that, I set up a spare aquarium with a filter that I filled with fresh water, and used a couple of nitra-zorb pouches in the filter. I let it run for several hours or overnight, then drained into buckets and repeated the process, alternating nitra-zorb pouches and recharging them as required.

So I'd suggest filtering nitrates out of the water as I've described. You might rig a filter on the bin you plan using.

As to bin or buckets, I used to filter water from my kitchen sink into 5g buckets. But now I do it in the basement into a 45g Rubbermade Brute trash can that's on the dolly that's made for it - works great! It might be a challenge getting a filter to mount on a round can or bin?? An Inexpensive hang on back canister filter might work well.

Improvise, adapt, and overcome - best of luck in resolving your nitrate issue.
 
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I concur - As mentioned, plants generally prefer ammonia over nitrates. They indirectly reduce nitrate generation by using ammonia, but even fast growing floating plants seem to do little to reduce tank nitrates - so I also doubt that they will do much to solve this problem.
I'll spare members/readers a recap of my nitrate fight and cut to the chase.
I pre-filter water for water changes through API Nitra-Zorb - sold in pouches (intended to be used in filters) it is a resin that adsorbs ammonia and nitrates and is rechargeable many, many times using non-iodized salt water (You can use aquarium salt or regular table salt that does not contain iodine).

The use life of the product pouches is not very long if used directly in the aquarium as detritus coats the surfaces. (I do not know if the product can be reclaimed with bleach/water like Seachem Purigen). HOWEVER, I have found that when filtering clean fresh water, the resin lasts and lasts. Now I ended up re-purposing an API Tap Water Filter, but it has been discontinued. But before that, I set up a spare aquarium with a filter that I filled with fresh water, and used a couple of nitra-zorb pouches in the filter. I let it run for several hours or overnight, then drained into buckets and repeated the process, alternating nitra-zorb pouches and recharging them as required.

So I'd suggest filtering nitrates out of the water as I've described. You might rig a filter on the bin you plan using.

As to bin or buckets, I used to filter water from my kitchen sink into 5g buckets. But now I do it in the basement into a 45g Rubbermade Brute trash can that's on the dolly that's made for it - works great! It might be a challenge getting a filter to mount on a round can or bin?? An Inexpensive hang on back canister filter might work well.

Improvise, adapt, and overcome - best of luck in resolving your nitrate issue.
This sounds great, thank you. I thought I'd need an actual nitrate filtering unit plumbed in, not just a media. May even be cheaper than plants. Thanks for the links:):)
"Improvise, adapt and overcome" - Heartbreak Ridge? ;)
 
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Ah, my other half is a former (never ex!) bootneck.
 
What levels do you achieve? I think I have good habits and a reasonable amount of plants but it's subjective.I have as high as 40ppm before a weekly water change
My tap water is 50ppm. When I was using tap water I could keep it at 50ppm but it never dropped. (My fish also had much shorter lives than they should). I have used filtration like @AbbeysDad and confirm what he says about the surfaces of the resin. In fact I used to filter the tap water through carbon before filtering the nitrates which made the resin effective for longer.

I have soft water fish (and hard water), and was also filtering to soften the water - so effectively a triple pass filter. For convenience I switched to using RO water. So now the water I put in has 0 nitrates. None of my 3 tanks ever gets above 5ppm by the time I do my weekly W/C. I recently returned from a 2 week holiday and my biggest tank was still at 0 ppm. That particular tank is very heavily stocked - but also has a lot of fast growing floating plants.

I am no longer paranoid about removing organics. I used to vacuum the substrate and remove dead leaves daily; and clean the filter and all surfaces and pipework weekly. I am still very careful about overfeeding and (based on other posts) suspect I feed a lot less than most. As the fish are all healthy, not skinny and regularly spawning I suspect most people don't realise how little you actually need to feed.
 

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