Nitrates high in established/planted tank

[eusher11]

Hey all! I'm back again, in need of some guidance. I have a 23G Fluval Vista tank. Originally when I first started into the hobby, I started with a 2.5g quarantine tank, and a 16.9g Fluval Flex. Anytime I upgraded tanks, I used the filter media from the previous tank to rapid cycle the new tank - used the same substrate, too. Point is, this tank is WELL established, and has been for years. 

A few months ago, I experienced what I like to call ammonia-geddon. From the beginning, I had been using my tap water for my tank. I have an API master kit, and back in 2020, when I got my first tank, there was NO ammonia, NO nitrite, and NO nitrate in my tap water. Perfect. WELL, I was experiencing some issues with ammonia. And when I say some issues, I mean the ammonia in my tank read 8.0ppm - it crept up with every water change. Thank goodness for Prime! That's immediate fish death. EVERYONE survived this ordeal - and there were multiple water changes that had to take place. Ultimately, because I just COULD NOT figure out where this ammonia was coming from (I wasn't over-feeding, I wasn't over-stocked - it's a 23G tank with 8 cory's). I finally decided to test my tap water, sure enough, 0.50ppm of ammonia. Went to the local Petco for advice - the fish lady told me to get spring water. So, I did. I've been using spring water for water changes for a couple of months now. Everything seemed to be going just fine. Until...my nitrates started increasing. I like to keep them between 10-20ppm. They're 40ppm. I have several plants in this tank, established plants. Just added some red root floaters and frogbit as well. 

Now, I've been trying to figure out our feeding schedule for a few weeks now. I've always read that cory's need to be fed twice daily, and only enough to eat in 3 minutes. I've been using frozen fish cubes, cutting them up - I've got the feeding down pat. The problem is, with the nitrates, I'm afraid to advance it to twice daily feedings. I do have some bladder snails that came in on plants - I don't mind them, they're a clean up crew. And I'd say I have about 20 in the tank. Can't imagine that's enough to kill my bioload. No ammonia, no nitrites, but nitrates were 40ppm.

Tuesday I did a 25% water change, with spring water. Yesterday, nitrates were still around 30ppm, so I did another 25% water change. Yesterday I decided to test my spring water, just to see what was in it. Nitrates in the spring water are 5ppm. Great. So I decided to test my tap water, just to see if I could switch back over to using tap. Haha, no. Ammonia is still 0.50ppm, and nitrates were 20ppm in the tap water. This seems...not good to me, but I called our water provider before about the ammonia, and they assured me it was just from the chloramine they use to decontaminate the water. I'll not be using tap water ever again from this sorry town. Haven't for months. 

So when all of this was going down yesterday, I got some distilled water to put into the tank. I didn't want to use strictly spring water, because of the nitrates in it. Which I still find so odd, why are there nitrates in spring water!? I took 5 gallons out. Replaced with 3 gallons of distilled water, and 2 gallons of spring. Parameters are good, didn't seem to mess anything up. But I'm worried that I'm going to have to switch exclusively to distilled water, and that scares me, because I know NOTHING about adding minerals to the tank. I know Seachem makes Equilibrium, but I really know nothing about it, or how to use it. No ammonia, no nitrites, nitrates are 25ppm. I'll take that for now...but going forward I know I need to figure something else out.

My journey as a fish keeper has been so stressful - just when I think I have it figured out, something else changes or goes wrong and I'm back to square one. Sometimes it feels like the universe is saying I shouldn't have a fish tank - but I'm hooked on this hobby, and I love my fish. Any insight would be appreciated. Added a picture of the tank, because I recently did some aqua scaping, and though I'm no artist, I'm kind of proud of it. 😄

The only fish store around me is Petco. They've always been super helpful and knowledgeable. 

[Colu]

30-40 ppm of nitrates won't harm your Cory's  once your floating plants start to spread they will start to remove a lot of the nitrates from your tank you could add some quick growing stem plants like hornwort or Elodea are you adding any fertilizer that would be adding nitrates to your tank like the co-op easy green 

[eusher11]

Oh I use easy green weekly with water changes! I use iron, too, for the java ferns. They get the little brown spots if I don't. I also use Fritz zyme with every water change as well! I do have a seachem tidal 55 filter on the way. Bought it because I can fit more filter media in. Also bought a nitrazorb filter pouch for it. The grand plan is to add at least 3-4 more Cory's. Make it an even 12. But I cannot justify doing that right now with my parameters. I moved the driftwood so they would have more floor room, they seem to appreciate that change. They are voracious eaters, so I don't suspect extreme stress or anything. But man, I'm so tired of having to change the water I'm using for water changes. Getting an additional bucket so I can do 50% water changes a little more easily. I use the poopy fish water to water my flowerbeds, lol. Lots of roses this year. 

[Guppysnail]

My tap has high nitrates. I use purigen in my filters to absorb organics so they do not turn into nitrate. 
When the tap is really high nitrate I mix spring and distilled because I also know nothing about mixing. 
Here is a thread you will find useful. I resorted to emergent gardens to help control nitrate. Here are a few of my tanks. 

[AllFishNoBrakes]

My only real comment is that 40ppm nitrates shouldn’t be something to stress over. I have tanks that run ~40ppm nitrates, and have for years with no issues. 
 

Agreed with @Colu that as your floating plants start to spread they will help soak up nitrates. If it was me, I wouldn’t stress it. 

[Colu]

On 6/15/2023 at 6:10 PM, eusher11 said:

Oh I use easy green weekly with water changes

Easy green is nitrogen based fertilizer so that will increase your nitrates that what's happening her 

[eusher11]

On 6/15/2023 at 1:36 PM, Pepere said:

I have 1 ppm ammonia in my tap water chronically…it doesnt pose a problem with water changes at all.  In a well cycled tank 1 ppm ammonia in a 50% water change yields 0.5 ppm ammonia and that will be metabolized away by beneficial bacteria within 12 hours.

your ammonia and nitrite issues were due to the tank not being cycled not the ammonia in the water.

 

ammonia is added to water by water districts in addition to chlorine and the two react to create chloramines.  Water districts do not add chloramines directly.  Customers closer to where chloramine and ammonia are mixed in are more likely to have chronic ammonia levels in their tap.  Customers far from where the ammonia and chlorine are injected in might see ammonia if there is not much flow in their pipe as the chlorine component  gets exhausted.  In that case, flushing the lines helps.

if you had the tank full with 0.5 ppm ammonia water and did a 50% water change with tap water with that same level, it would remain at 0.5 ppm ammonia after.  The levels do not accumulate.

 

When all of the ammonia stuff happened, I didn't have any nitrites, but my nitrates were 20ppm. I don't think the tank wasn't cycled. I freaked out and was adding ammo-lock to the tank. That may have increased the ammonia. Either way, freaked me out enough to switch to spring water. 

[Sharon M]

Once your plants get bigger, they will mop up your nitrates. 

I couldn't worry too much. 
 

That is  a shame about your town's tap water!

[Lennie]

All plants you have in your tank are slow grower. Plants basically use nitrate while growing.

Hornwort, elodea, floating plants, etc. all grow crazy and absorb nitrates like crazy at the same time!

 

Would highly recommend keeping some floating plants and fast growers there if you wanna lower your nitrate.

On 6/15/2023 at 8:13 PM, Guppysnail said:

My tap has high nitrates. I use purigen in my filters to absorb organics so they do not turn into nitrate. 
When the tap is really high nitrate I mix spring and distilled because I also know nothing about mixing. 
Here is a thread you will find useful. I resorted to emergent gardens to help control nitrate. Here are a few of my tanks. 

You can easily see how fast growing plants are introduced here to help with nitrate readings!

[Jennifer V]

As @AllFishNoBrakes mentioned, ~40 ppm nitrates isn't anything to worry about. My pea puffer tank has always been around 40 ppm and they are happy little fish. Plants need at least 20 ppm so I think consistency is the key here. I would stuff the tank with as many fast growing plants as you can and let them suck up some of the nitrates 

Edited June 16, 2023 by Jennifer V

[Jennifer V]

On 6/16/2023 at 6:05 AM, Pepere said:

Consistency is important.  Plants program new growth to make best use of available resources, while old leaves have limited ability to change.  As such old growth is where we typically see algae growing.  Sometimes the plant gives up on an old leaf and stops defending it.  
 

I have taken to scanning my tank every morning for leaves starting to sport algae.  I am pretty quick to clip off an errant fuzzy leaf and remove it from the tank. I also skim the tank every day for detached leaves and remove from the tank.  I am working under the assumption of it being easier to work at preventing an Algae outbreak than to deal with a full fledged one.

 

I believe however that 20 ppm nitrate is about the upper limit that plants can utilize rather than the minimum level they need.  Anything over 20 ppm is not providing plant benefit.  Algae likes it though…

I'm just going off of what I learned from the lovely folks here that 0-20 ppm is not ideal for plant growth and ACO aims for 50 ppm for optimal plant growth. But you're right, there is a tricky balance between algae and plant growth that we need to keep an eye on. 

[nabokovfan87]

On 6/15/2023 at 9:53 AM, eusher11 said:

I've always read that cory's need to be fed twice daily, and only enough to eat in 3 minutes.

I feed mine once a day.  When I am trying to breed and get a spawn I will condition them by feeding them a bit more at night.  I've been doing it this way for months and months.  As long as the fish are healthy, you can feed once a day.

On 6/15/2023 at 9:53 AM, eusher11 said:

Haha, no. Ammonia is still 0.50ppm, and nitrates were 20ppm in the tap water. This seems...not good to me, but I called our water provider before about the ammonia, and they assured me it was just from the chloramine they use to decontaminate the water. I'll not be using tap water ever again from this sorry town. Haven't for months. 

Fritz aquatics has a very good article on how to handle and what to expect with chloramines.  Essentially, you add a little bit more dechlorinator and you're fine.  You can also pre-condition your water for the sake of letting an outside tank without fish process the ammonia and off-gas things like chloramines.  The most common way to do this is to use a big trashcan and add lava rock to the base with an airstone.  fill it up and after a few days you can test for the normal things to verify that what you're trying to avoid has off-gassed.

  

On 6/15/2023 at 9:53 AM, eusher11 said:

Which I still find so odd, why are there nitrates in spring water!? I

Depends on the source.  There's a lot of controversy over bottled water and the sources.  CBC News has some quality reporting on youtube regarding the topic as well as things like Last week tonight which do a detailed reporting, investigative style of journalism on a specific topic. 

Edited June 17, 2023 by nabokovfan87
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