weekly high NitrAtes, everything else normal????

[nicky82]

Hey everyone... So this puzzles me. We have a 10G freshwater with 6 fancy guppies, a mystery snail and 2 shrimp, and lots of live plants. Its about 2 months old.

I test the water on a weekly bases, and everything always is within normal ranges except the NitrAtes. At the end of the week, its always up to 80ppm. So, I end up doing a 50% water change, and it drops to 20ppm. But a week later its back up (understandably).
Should i be doing a 75% water change till its back to normal?
Now, any ideas how to get control of it? Perhaps another filter??
I use a master test kit to test the water, water conditioner with every water change
Btw.... The fish all act normal....

Thanks!!

 

[OrangeCones]

If changing 50% of the water reduces your readings of nitrate from 80 to 20, something is wrong with your testing. If one volume of water has 80 parts per million, and an equal part of 'new' water had zero parts per million, then the combined water would show 40 parts per million. Is the test kit out of date? Are you shaking the crap out of the liquid drop bottles?

Another filter will not change the numbers. It gives a place for the beneficial bacteria to live, so if you were showing ammonia and nitrite, another filter may give you more area for the beneficial bacteria to live and catch up with those waste products. Nitrate is the 'end result' of the waste produced by the fish, and no amount of 'extra' filtration will reduce that product.

 

[nicky82]

i just found out Im not suppose to retest right after the water change :/ thats probably why the values are weird.
But the test kit is not old.
and I admit I used a strip to retest, not the actual master kit.. have to get rid of the cheaper test strips we originally had anyways....

but good to know that we dont need another filter!!!

thank you for your help anyways OC!!!

 

[nicky82]

i just found out Im not suppose to retest right after the water change :/ thats probably why the values are weird.
But the test kit is not old.
and I admit I used a strip to retest, not the actual master kit.. have to get rid of the cheaper test strips we originally had anyways....

but good to know that we dont need another filter!!!

thank you for your help anyways OC!!!

 

[KcMopar]

With the amount of tests you get with the liquid dropper test its really a ton cheaper then the strips. You can also buy individual refill kits for them pretty cheap to if you dont need the pH test.