Nitrate madness

[WhiteCloud]

I have been trying to battle a recent spike in my nitrates for weeks now. My tank has always had zero nitrates I could go indefinitely without water changes. I had to dose a ton of nitrates for my Plants to grow well. I use an r/o water filter And mix city water in to get proper water parameters. All of a sudden my nitrates spiked without a spike in any other parameters. I have added more media to my filter I also added seachem Pristine and pyrogens bags two weeks ago. My 120 gallon tank has a FX4 and fx6 filter And the media is focused heavily on biological filtration. It is over filtered and understocked and very heavily planted. I have Even added a ton of pathos to try and eat up the nitrogen. I went and talk to my fish store guy and he told me that there have been a ton of people that have come in lately and said they had the same problem. We all tested our water before we put it in the tank with zero nitrates and within an hour they spiked up again after a 60% water change. I live in the north bay area and this guy said that he is having the same problem in the East Bay to and he talk to the water district and they said nothing is different about the water. 
What is going on! I am going to start using pure our oh water and just adding equilibrium and other things to make my water parameters correct instead of using city water have any of you experienced this?

[LaurieinIA]

I’ve got something similar going on here in the Midwest. I used to easily go 2 weeks between water changes on all my tanks - even my African Cichlids.

The last 2 months, I have needed to do weekly changes. At first, I thought it was my tap water (we recently moved) but I use RO water on 2 tanks all the time, only my cichlids were in tap, so that isn’t consistent with the issue. Even using mostly RO water for the cichlids the last few changes, my nitrates are climbing faster than normal.

I’m going to limit feeding to 2x per week- down from every other day- to see how much that helps.

 

[HH Morant]

It would be helpful to talk numbers here. What PPM are you talking about when you say "spike?"

Your filtration sounds fine, maybe great. An increase in nitrates means that your biological filtration is functioning properly. It shows that ammonia and nitrites are being converted to nitrate, and that is what a biological filter is supposed to do. The filter does not remove nitrates.

An increase in nitrates can come from an increase in stocking or an increase in feeding. It can also come from anything in the tank which might be decomposing.

 

[WhiteCloud]

40 to 80 ppm.  Just odd because I haven’t changed stock or feeding. Also because so many people in my area just reported the same thing happening even though the water from the tap shows 0 ppm

[HH Morant]

If everybody is starting with zero nitrates in the tap water, then something is happening in their aquariums to cause the nitrates. It seems unlikely that the same thing is happening in all the tanks.

[WhiteCloud]

My contact  at the fish store Said that he is getting reports of the same thing and had the same experience himself. We add the water to the tank and the nitrates drop. Within an hour they spike back up again

[Guppysnail]

On 11/30/2021 at 3:09 PM, WhiteCloud said:

I also added seachem Pristine

My understanding of this product (it’s been awhile since I read up on it). Is it’s some type of bacteria/enzyme or something of that nature that breaks down solid waste excess food. This could potentially break down things faster than they normally break down from solid form increasing your nitrates rapidly. Just food for thought I have not used this product and I’m not real sciencey.