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So I’m new at both fish keeping and shrimp keeping. Now I have 2 - 5 gallon fish tanks (one with a Hillstream loach, 4 Danios, a couple moss balls and some hornwort. The other has 1 male betta, 2 mystery snails, a moss ball and some hornwort) and 1 - 29 gallon tank that I’m currently trying to cycle (right now it has hornwort, java moss and some spiderwood in it but no fish/snails/shrimp) I’ve been testing my water in all my tanks about once a week. I started my two other fish tanks out of an impulse almost... I saw my betta at Pet Supplies Plus had a tank in my basement and decided I had to take him home... so I hadn’t cycled my 5 gallon tanks before I stuck anything in. I know it’s not good but I hadn’t done any research so I didn’t know better. Now I do. But my question is: I haven’t had ANY nitrites in any of my tanks. My ammonia and nitrates are there... my ammonia hasn’t gotten over 1 ppm and my nitrates haven’t gotten over around 40 ppm in ANY tank that I have. But why am I not seeing any nitrites? Is it Bc my tanks have plants in them? Thank you for reading this super long post and thanks in advance for any advice/answers you can give😊

Hi I have an issue with my old tank, which has over 2 years right now and the issue is NO3. Currently I am forced to do 25-30% water changes twice a week, and this is just enough to keep the NO3 below 10. The tank is 30L (8 gal), inert substrate, heavily planted, I add no fertilizers. Two HOB filters - one is sponge, the other one is small sponge + peat + JBL nitratex. For water changes I use salty shrimp GH +, Azoo Triple Black Water, Azoo Mineral Plus(every second week) and Azoo Ph Down, to adjust the pH of the water that goes into the tank with what's already there. As for bacteria I add seachem pristine, and seachem stability once a week around 2ml of each. Feeding is once per 2-3 days, small amounts that gets eaten in a few hours. So I had that issue already around 5 months back and what I did is bought the JBL bionitratex and added duckweed, and it did solved the problem but to get a good result I had to use two bags for a single tank (the product comes with 4 bags total). Now this thing is quiet expensive imo for the time it lasts, so I would like to ask for any other options to keep the NO3 in check, as the plants are clearly not able to handle that. From my observations - there is a substantial amount of muck in the substrate, but since the tank is heavily planted I cannot vacuum it. Quick pic of the tank below. Your help greatly appreciated !