Beginner Question - Nitrate (?)
- Thread starter Chazwick
- Start date
,
Here is a very detailed post from an experienced fish keeper in another group that I belong to... all about NITRATES. Generally, you want to keep them under 40ppm.
Go re-read the Basic Chemistry and Nitrogen Cycle links in the Sticky posts for beginners.
Message:
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 10:45:48 -0400
From: "Steve S" <steve@>
Subject: Nitrate (Long post)
There does seem to be a lot of unnecessary concern of nitrate levels
expressed by people on this list for relatively low levels of nitrate.
Nitrate is the end product of the ammonia cycle that occurs in every tank.
There is no easy way to naturally remove nitrate without the use of a setup
that uses anaerobic bacteria to reduce nitrate to its components. The usual
method of deal with nitrate is water changes and the addition of live plants
(which includes algal growth).
At what level should one really become concerned about the level of nitrates
in the aquarium. A level of 1000 ppm is definitely a concern, since
everything dies. So we need to go lower than that. 500 ppm is still of
definite concern. Many animals and plants will die at this level also, but
some will live, though not well, as they will be subject to long-term
effects of nitrate, such as hole-in-head disease and the erosion of the
lateral line. Some plants also will not survive this level of nitrates.
At 200 ppm, the effects of nitrate will be more long term than immediate.
Again, we would be looking at such things as later line disease and
hole-in-head as a result. Going lower will help reduce the effects. At 150
ppm, again, the effects are long term. Going even lower, long term effects
are still present.
Ideally, one would wish to reduce nitrate levels to less than 20 ppm, but
immediate action is not called for until you reach a number of more than 150
ppm. (please do note that figures for a marine aquarium are very much
different, and action is called for when nitrate is measured in the single
digits of ppm. In a marine environment, it is possible to reduce nitrates to
immeasurable levels through the use of foam fractioners, which do not work
well in fresh water.)
So, you notice that your nitrates are rising, or at a high level. One can
simply panic and do immediate large water changes to reduce the level of
nitrates. However, doing this fails to discover and remedy the core cause of
the high level of nitrates. Unless you are getting reading over 150 ppm of
nitrate, you do have some time to do investigative work to discover and
remedy the cause of the nitrates, while your regular water changes should
help you reduce the level.
Where does nitrate come from? Nitrate is the end product of the ammonia
cycle as we follow it in the aquarium. Ammonia is produced as a waste
product by the animals you have living in your tank. It can also be produced
by dead and decaying animals and plants as well as food added to the
aquarium. If you are using fertilizer for your plants, this may also be a
source of ammonia. You need to reduce the sources of ammonia. Feeding less
will help reduce the level. Most of us feed our fish too well. A day of
fasting may help the health of your fish, as well as reducing the amount fed
each day. (Raising fry is a whole other ball of wax, which I will not be
covering here, but to get quick growth you do want to ensure they are well
fed.) If there is left over food when you are feeding, you will need to
reduce the amount of food you give to your fish, until there is no
left-overs in the tank. Until this is remedied, you will want to wait a
while after feeding the fish, then siphon off the left-overs.
If you are fertilizing your live plants, you will want to reduce or stop the
fertilization of the plants or start adding only the trace elements your
plants may need for good growth and avoid a fertilizer that contain
nitrogenous products.
Also look for and remove any dead materials from your aquarium. Likely, if
this is a fish, you'll do it rather rapidly. If it is plant material, then
you will need to, perhaps, do this on a daily basis. Algae poses a
particular problem. Removal of algae will reduce the capacity of your
aquarium to remove nitrates, but then, it is also difficult to know when to
remove it because it may be dead or simply another form of algae. It may be
best to follow your aesthetic sense and remove what does not appeal to you,
and remove any that is not green. Those of you that have snails in your
aquarium are faced with a sometimes difficult decision--is the snail dead or
is it alive? Tough to tell sometimes. However, if you have a nitrate
problem, it may be well to take the conservative course of action and remove
any snails you have doubts about, either to dispose of or to place in
another environment.
Throughout this entire process, you will need to keep an eye on the progress
you are making. Go back to daily testing of your ammonia, nitrite and
nitrate levels. Also test your tap water, which could be another source of
nitrates in your aquarium. The EPA has a regulation that states that
drinking water should not contain more than 10 ppm of nitrate. However, from
reports of aquarists around the country, not all water companies are meeting
this requirement. Also, if you are using well water, your nitrates may be
high, especially when the aquifer is in agricultural parts of the country.
(Our well fertilized lawns and gardens can also have an effect on the
nitrate level of aquifers, but most research has pointed to agriculture as a
large culprit.) If your water is starting with unacceptable levels of
nitrate, you will need to look into means to reduce the nitrate before the
water reaches the aquarium. This is usually done with chemical adsorption
products.
If your nitrate level still does not lower after doing all this, you will
need to look at some other aspects of your aquarium. I have mentioned live
plants in this discussion, but I am aware that not all people utilize live
plants in their aquariums. There may be practical reasons for this, like the
vegetarian habits of your fish prevent the growth of plant s to any great
extent, and may reduce the number of plants you have, your fish may be
diggers that uproot plants, etc. Your tank may simply be overcrowded with
fish, and be overloading the biological processes that would normally handle
such situations. In the former situation, you may want to utilize the marine
idea of a refugarium, where there is a separate tank that water flows
through that has plants to pull out the "bad stuff" from the water, with
water from the main tank run through the filtration system into the
refugarium and back into the main tank. You may also wish to investigate
plants that may be immune to the predation of your fish. As for
overcrowding, well, you simply need to reduce the numbers of fish that are
present in the tank. You may set up more aquariums to house them or give
them to friends who would like them. You may even be able to bring them back
to you LFS for credit.
Another source may be a decoration that has recently been added to your tank
that is leaching substances into your water as it 'cures' in your tank.
Removal of this object will show a quick and drastic reduction with your
next water change. Should this be the case, you'll need to either cure the
item outside the tank, or do without inside the tank.
Also, not usual, but, perhaps not as unusual as we may like to think, there
may be an outside force acting upon the tank, like something some one has
added to the tank without your knowledge. One of the kids could have put
something in the tank without your knowledge (and you may never know if the
youngin' expects they'll get a punishment for admitting it) or an adult at a
party may have added something just o see what the fish will do. This kind
of thing can be the devil to track down, and the influence will abate with
time.
What ever you need to do, don't panic. Take things slowly and try to
identify the cause of the problem. Your fish will allow you time to fix
things. Should you be keeping marine fish, well, as I mentioned earlier, we
are in a whole other ballpark there, and you may need to take more rapid
action to avoid losing animals. Marine animals have less a tolerance for
nitrate than freshwater do, and I would advise you to find a guru near you
that can be of assistance (I'm not a marine person, nor do I play one on TV,
and do not claim to have any special knowledge of marine topics.) Don't buy
into any 'magic' cures for what ails your tank. They may do more harm than
good.
Thank you for your patience reading this long, and somewhat involved post.
\\Steve//
Go re-read the Basic Chemistry and Nitrogen Cycle links in the Sticky posts for beginners.
Message:
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 10:45:48 -0400
From: "Steve S" <steve@>
Subject: Nitrate (Long post)
There does seem to be a lot of unnecessary concern of nitrate levels
expressed by people on this list for relatively low levels of nitrate.
Nitrate is the end product of the ammonia cycle that occurs in every tank.
There is no easy way to naturally remove nitrate without the use of a setup
that uses anaerobic bacteria to reduce nitrate to its components. The usual
method of deal with nitrate is water changes and the addition of live plants
(which includes algal growth).
At what level should one really become concerned about the level of nitrates
in the aquarium. A level of 1000 ppm is definitely a concern, since
everything dies. So we need to go lower than that. 500 ppm is still of
definite concern. Many animals and plants will die at this level also, but
some will live, though not well, as they will be subject to long-term
effects of nitrate, such as hole-in-head disease and the erosion of the
lateral line. Some plants also will not survive this level of nitrates.
At 200 ppm, the effects of nitrate will be more long term than immediate.
Again, we would be looking at such things as later line disease and
hole-in-head as a result. Going lower will help reduce the effects. At 150
ppm, again, the effects are long term. Going even lower, long term effects
are still present.
Ideally, one would wish to reduce nitrate levels to less than 20 ppm, but
immediate action is not called for until you reach a number of more than 150
ppm. (please do note that figures for a marine aquarium are very much
different, and action is called for when nitrate is measured in the single
digits of ppm. In a marine environment, it is possible to reduce nitrates to
immeasurable levels through the use of foam fractioners, which do not work
well in fresh water.)
So, you notice that your nitrates are rising, or at a high level. One can
simply panic and do immediate large water changes to reduce the level of
nitrates. However, doing this fails to discover and remedy the core cause of
the high level of nitrates. Unless you are getting reading over 150 ppm of
nitrate, you do have some time to do investigative work to discover and
remedy the cause of the nitrates, while your regular water changes should
help you reduce the level.
Where does nitrate come from? Nitrate is the end product of the ammonia
cycle as we follow it in the aquarium. Ammonia is produced as a waste
product by the animals you have living in your tank. It can also be produced
by dead and decaying animals and plants as well as food added to the
aquarium. If you are using fertilizer for your plants, this may also be a
source of ammonia. You need to reduce the sources of ammonia. Feeding less
will help reduce the level. Most of us feed our fish too well. A day of
fasting may help the health of your fish, as well as reducing the amount fed
each day. (Raising fry is a whole other ball of wax, which I will not be
covering here, but to get quick growth you do want to ensure they are well
fed.) If there is left over food when you are feeding, you will need to
reduce the amount of food you give to your fish, until there is no
left-overs in the tank. Until this is remedied, you will want to wait a
while after feeding the fish, then siphon off the left-overs.
If you are fertilizing your live plants, you will want to reduce or stop the
fertilization of the plants or start adding only the trace elements your
plants may need for good growth and avoid a fertilizer that contain
nitrogenous products.
Also look for and remove any dead materials from your aquarium. Likely, if
this is a fish, you'll do it rather rapidly. If it is plant material, then
you will need to, perhaps, do this on a daily basis. Algae poses a
particular problem. Removal of algae will reduce the capacity of your
aquarium to remove nitrates, but then, it is also difficult to know when to
remove it because it may be dead or simply another form of algae. It may be
best to follow your aesthetic sense and remove what does not appeal to you,
and remove any that is not green. Those of you that have snails in your
aquarium are faced with a sometimes difficult decision--is the snail dead or
is it alive? Tough to tell sometimes. However, if you have a nitrate
problem, it may be well to take the conservative course of action and remove
any snails you have doubts about, either to dispose of or to place in
another environment.
Throughout this entire process, you will need to keep an eye on the progress
you are making. Go back to daily testing of your ammonia, nitrite and
nitrate levels. Also test your tap water, which could be another source of
nitrates in your aquarium. The EPA has a regulation that states that
drinking water should not contain more than 10 ppm of nitrate. However, from
reports of aquarists around the country, not all water companies are meeting
this requirement. Also, if you are using well water, your nitrates may be
high, especially when the aquifer is in agricultural parts of the country.
(Our well fertilized lawns and gardens can also have an effect on the
nitrate level of aquifers, but most research has pointed to agriculture as a
large culprit.) If your water is starting with unacceptable levels of
nitrate, you will need to look into means to reduce the nitrate before the
water reaches the aquarium. This is usually done with chemical adsorption
products.
If your nitrate level still does not lower after doing all this, you will
need to look at some other aspects of your aquarium. I have mentioned live
plants in this discussion, but I am aware that not all people utilize live
plants in their aquariums. There may be practical reasons for this, like the
vegetarian habits of your fish prevent the growth of plant s to any great
extent, and may reduce the number of plants you have, your fish may be
diggers that uproot plants, etc. Your tank may simply be overcrowded with
fish, and be overloading the biological processes that would normally handle
such situations. In the former situation, you may want to utilize the marine
idea of a refugarium, where there is a separate tank that water flows
through that has plants to pull out the "bad stuff" from the water, with
water from the main tank run through the filtration system into the
refugarium and back into the main tank. You may also wish to investigate
plants that may be immune to the predation of your fish. As for
overcrowding, well, you simply need to reduce the numbers of fish that are
present in the tank. You may set up more aquariums to house them or give
them to friends who would like them. You may even be able to bring them back
to you LFS for credit.
Another source may be a decoration that has recently been added to your tank
that is leaching substances into your water as it 'cures' in your tank.
Removal of this object will show a quick and drastic reduction with your
next water change. Should this be the case, you'll need to either cure the
item outside the tank, or do without inside the tank.
Also, not usual, but, perhaps not as unusual as we may like to think, there
may be an outside force acting upon the tank, like something some one has
added to the tank without your knowledge. One of the kids could have put
something in the tank without your knowledge (and you may never know if the
youngin' expects they'll get a punishment for admitting it) or an adult at a
party may have added something just o see what the fish will do. This kind
of thing can be the devil to track down, and the influence will abate with
time.
What ever you need to do, don't panic. Take things slowly and try to
identify the cause of the problem. Your fish will allow you time to fix
things. Should you be keeping marine fish, well, as I mentioned earlier, we
are in a whole other ballpark there, and you may need to take more rapid
action to avoid losing animals. Marine animals have less a tolerance for
nitrate than freshwater do, and I would advise you to find a guru near you
that can be of assistance (I'm not a marine person, nor do I play one on TV,
and do not claim to have any special knowledge of marine topics.) Don't buy
into any 'magic' cures for what ails your tank. They may do more harm than
good.
Thank you for your patience reading this long, and somewhat involved post.
\\Steve//
I wish I could take credit for it but it was written by Steve in a yahoo group that I belong to. I keep a copy on my computer for occasional posting in forums when I see questions about Nitrates. It really does explain things in simple terms and incorporates information about the Nitrogen "Cycle" as well.
