Nitrates

[catfishfan]

I have a 10 g planted tank thats been cycled for probably 1 year and all of a sudden last week, I checked the water conditions and my nitrates went from 10 to 40. I did a water change and checked again and they went down to normal. I checked again today and theyre back up to between 40 and 50. Whats goin on

amm-0
nitrite-0
nitrate-40-50
pH-7

3 fruit tetras
3 ballon mollies
assorted plants

 

[mwm]

Are you over feeding? I know at night time most plants release the nitrates they absorb during the day, maybe you could do a water change when the lights are out

 

[catfishfan]

I think I underfeed them. once a day they get tetra flakes and everyother day they get 2 small algae wafers and every 2 weeks a slice of zucchini. Im stumped. Could that be overfeeding? I use the "size of a dime" rule with the flakes.

 

[paulthegreat]

How often do you do water changes? A 50% change one a week is usually enough, you don't have a recent snail problem?

 

[WILDER]

Check filter your sponges might be heavily mucked up and need a rinse, also you might need to add half of a new sponge and just remove half of the old sponge, squeeze the muck from the old removed sponge onto the new one.