Water Change And Nitrates

[75gallon]

I do a water change 2 a week.
 
i clean my filters out 1 a month in water I take out of the tank. I then fill a bucket up with tap water and I use a small filter with a hose attached to the front to put the tap water in to my tank. is this the right way to do it ?
 
what live plants need low or no light as my hood on my tank is broken and needs repairing ( so I have no light)
 
out the tap nitrate is 20ppm
 
any way of lowering that before I put it in my tank.
 
thanks

 

[PrairieSunflower]

As long as the water is dechlorinated and temperature matched then it sounds good.
 
I haven't managed to kill an anubias yet, so I'd say those are good plants.

 

[DrRob]

I wouldn't worry too much about 20ppm nitrate unless you're keeping very sensitive stock. Mainly the thing with nitrates is that they're something that we can measure that rises, rather than the whole heap of things that we can't measure that are slowly accumulating in your tank that a water change helps to dilute.
 
As for the plants, personally I'd not bother if you've not got a proper light, they stand a chance of surviving if you pick the right ones but are unlikely to do well and are probably more likely to die back and add more pollution to your water.
 
The only question I have with the water changes is whether you have city water, if so, do you dechlorinate the tank?

 

[Meeresstille]

I've heard of people using the new seedlings of spider plants, letting their roots absorb the nutrients like nitrate from their tanks. I've never tried this myself so you would have to do more research on this, but I believe you would leave the tank uncovered, other floating plants would work too. They then can use the light from the room for their processes.
 
Personally I find floating plants kind of cool in a tank with their roots dangling in the water! You can also trim those back if it is getting to much!