so i do religious water changes on my tanks, as i know all of you do too. and i know if your like me you dont usually test your nitrates, and when you do say a 30% water change you feel pretty good about your water quality.. but i found that over time your nitrates can "creep" up even with weekly religious water changes. im not going to go in depth with math but when you do say a 30% water change and if your tap water has 0 nitrate it effectively cuts your nitrates by ~1/3.. if your like me you have a set amount of food you feed each day, which means a set amount of waste each week, producing a set amount of weekly nitrates. say your tank accumulates 30 ppm of nitrates per week and u do a 30% weekly water change.
week 1: start 0ppm end 30ppm 30%wc puts you at 21ppm
week2: start 21ppm end 51ppm 30%wc puts you at 36ppm
week3: start 36ppm end 66ppm 30%wc puts you at 46ppm
as you can see it can slowly creep up on you even if you do large water changes up to 50% like i do. you need to go through a "reset" period doing daily water changes to get it back down. i guess the moral of the story is to use your test kits. my nitrates were at 60ppm after a 50% water change yesterday thats how i figured this out.
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week 1: start 0ppm end 30ppm 30%wc puts you at 21ppm
week2: start 21ppm end 51ppm 30%wc puts you at 36ppm
week3: start 36ppm end 66ppm 30%wc puts you at 46ppm
as you can see it can slowly creep up on you even if you do large water changes up to 50% like i do. you need to go through a "reset" period doing daily water changes to get it back down. i guess the moral of the story is to use your test kits. my nitrates were at 60ppm after a 50% water change yesterday thats how i figured this out.
Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app
