Crazy Nitrate Spike

Jan 25, 2011
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#1
My newest tank (47g column) has been running for about 8 months now (livebearer) and again i've never had any problems. Yet, within the past few days i have been losing fish like crazy. I do water test every 2 weeks and i've never seen any nitrates, yet yesterday my nitrates were about 60ppm and the ammonia is sitting about 0.25. My gold nugget pleco has lost all his color and that is the last fish that i want to loose. Please help me!
 

aakaakaak

Superstar Fish
Sep 9, 2010
1,324
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Chesapeake, Virginia
#2
How often are you doing water changes, not just tests? You should be doing water changes weekly. Also, did you have some babies die or lose a couple livebearers that you just can't find? They could have died under something and rotting in your tank.
 

Jan 25, 2011
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#3
I do a 15-25% water change every week and i check my ornaments often for any bodies. I haven't found any babies or other bodies; so i have been racking my brain as to what is going on. I just changed my filters, but i'm going to go buy new ones and i'm doing another change today. But i'm nervous about it because i just did about 2 days ago.
 

Jan 25, 2011
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#5
Should i let it just run with the new filters?


I just realized that i sound really new at this whole fish keeping thing...I work with fish everyday and i've had tanks for years but this is the first time that i've had something like this happen. I've put a lot of money into these fish and it's really upsetting that i don't know what to do.
 

Aug 13, 2010
870
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Sicklerville, NJ
#8
Don't change the filters again. Just do water changes - daily if needed - to keep the nitrate levels down until they restabilize.

Until your tank's water parameters have stabilized and back to norm (0 Ammonia-0-NitItes and under 20 NitrAtes) then you can clean your filters in old tank water, or new dechlorinated water. Depending on the filter you have, you may have more then one "filter" in there, I have four in my Marineland 350 and change one a week (Well clean once a week, I don't change them until they fall apart) For now I would do daily 50% water changes until the readings are normal.