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Nitrates rising too fast


dao

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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 !

 

 

tank.jpg

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  • 8 months later...
On 12/3/2016 at 6:24 AM, dao said:

From my observations - there is a substantial amount of muck in the substrate, but since the tank is heavily planted I cannot vacuum it

I'm relatively new to the hobby so take my advice for what its worth, but it sounds like you already know the main issue.  Why not unroot a 2 inch by 2 inch section of plants and clean the gravel and start picking up the substrates slowly?  Since you will be stirring up a lot of leftovers, you shouldn't have to feed too much if at all.  Even though its a small area, it should stir up the bottom around it pretty good and you could always replant that and make another 2 x 2 hole on the other side of the tank. 

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I actually cleaned the substrate and rescaped  the tank all over again and it hardly changed  anything. The substrate is clean now and the NO3 still goes to over 10 really quick.

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Hey Dao,

  Checked the Azoo website and it says that Triple Black contain's " anti bacterial and anti fungus substances, can be a pretective agent from bacteria and fungus infection".  Maybe it is killing off your beneficial nitrifying bacteria causing your NO3 to stay high.

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1 hour ago, oem said:

Hey Dao,

  Checked the Azoo website and it says that Triple Black contain's " anti bacterial and anti fungus substances, can be a pretective agent from bacteria and fungus infection".  Maybe it is killing off your beneficial nitrifying bacteria causing your NO3 to stay high.

 

Wouldn't a lack of nitrifying bacteria result in an ammonia or nitrite spike? The fact that the problem is nitrates suggests that the tank's bacterial colony is well established but that there's an additional source of nitrates (or ammonia from organic decaying matter being converted to nitrates) in the system.


What are the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate levels in your tap water? Is it possible that that's where you're getting the input to the system? The only other obvious input would be the food you're adding.

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Aotf.  Thanks for catching my mistake.  These 55+ hour weeks are catching up with me.  I'll stick to trying to help on the weekends after better sleep.,,,,Mike

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I would test the water you're using before you remineralize. I used my areas tap for the longest time and then it started killing my shrimp, tested it and it was 10ppm coming from the faucet. (Now its 60ppm and there's a big scandal with my water company but besides the point)

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I'm using RO water, so no NO3 there. I also have two other tanks and while NO3 also rises noticeably, it is not as fast as in this one so I'm really puzzled. Since i dont really have time to do such frequent water changes I just added purigen and the NO3 stays at 10 or below before i do WC

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  • 4 weeks later...

I would cut back on the additives myself to try to find the load balance. Seachem Excel at half dose will boost the growth rate of your plants which will increase thier capacity as Nitrate consumers. The SS GH drops my pH to 6.5 but I use Mosura pH down which has no effect on the TDS unlike Seachems Acid buffer which shoots it up big time (but somewhat expected). I half dose with ferts (Seachem) to keep everything alive but thats it. It's definitely a balancing act.

 

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  • 2 months later...

I realize this is an older thread so I just want to be helpful. Sometimes in an older tank this event with nitrates has happened to me. I fixed it by simple and slowly adding potassium to the tank and continue with regular 10 to 20% water changes. this will allow your plants to kick into a higher gear of growth rate and naturally bring nitrate down. at this point watch for GSA on the glass. this indicates phosphate is low to nonexistent . 

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