Audie

Thank you so much, very helpful. I didn’t think about fertilizers as a source. I will try this out!

Yes I am using easy green…. I didn’t know that could be the source of nitrates. What kind of fertilizers should I look for that won’t cause high nitrates?

Thank you so much for your answers - I have tested my municipality’s water, it has 0 nitrates and nitrites and is fairly hard. As for the test strips, I use the same test strips on my other two tanks and don’t get the same result as my newly set-up tank referenced in my original question. A little history behind this new tank: I had a 5 gallon, heavily planted tank with snails and a couple of ghost shrimp. A few months into it my nitrates spiked really high and eventually killed my shrimp. I changed the water every other day, no food was going in and I removed any dead leaves immediately; but still my nitrates were high. After a year I took it apart, thoroughly washed the tank and equipment, added new gravel and added the same plants back in. This is now the tank where 3 days after doing this my nitrates are high again. Maybe it’s in the plants, since that’s the only factor that has remained the same? I don’t know, but I appreciate everyone’s suggestions. Thank you!

I just set up a new tank 3 days ago with established sponges from another healthy tank. The only stock are a handful of rams horn snails and live plants. My nitrites are 0 but my nitrates are 100 or more. What is the reason for this and what can I do about it?

Can anyone identify these microscopic white things covering my glass? They’re too small for me to tell if they’re worms or bugs.

That is good to know! I think it’s beautiful, Platys are a wonderful fish. I just didn’t expect that they’d be so prolific 😆 It’s a little more reassuring to know the population will plateau in time. Thanks for your input!

Good to know! If my 6yo isn’t creeped out by frogs, I’ll definitely get some of those 😄 And I like the dwarf gourami suggestion, they’re very pretty! Hopefully I can get this Platy population under control 😬

Thank you! That is very helpful. I’ve been interested in African dwarf frogs, but do you know if they’ll bother the ghost shrimp?

My 6yo daughter has a 10 gallon tank with a few ghost shrimp. I bought her 4 Platys to add to it, however they had multiplied out of control. I have at least 20 platys now in this 10 gallon and I need to control the population. Are there fish out there that I could add to the tank that would help control the fry population? I’m not sure what to do with all of these fish.