40 ppm Nitrates enough for HITH?

[icherno7]

Ok, well thats a lot of waste (high nitrates) for a 100g, unless youre doing 50% water changes every few days.

Heres what Id do:

Id get rid of 4 or 5 of the bichirs (or at least 4-5 of your least favorite fish) and have a strict water change regiment once a week of about 60% and feed them only what they can eat in about 30 seconds.

If you dont want to do that and want to keep everything you have in the tank and still have lower nitrates to help get rid of the HITH, youre going to need to do 50% changes about every 3 days AND change their diet to a good pellet, IMO....which is a lot of work for a tank. Either that or get a 55 gallon sump for the tank and do 50-75% weekly.

Now, my advice is coming from an aspect of not overstocking, which isnt the route youve gone. I dont like to overstock and I dont like to do water changes, so Ive got the minimal stock, even in my 265g with a 48g sump. Even with what I have, I still maintain 50% changes weekly.

Good Luck with whatever you choose.

So a sump would help?

 

[Sarah88]

yes sumps always help because they add to the water volume and so help to dilute the pollutants in the water, and oscars are already very susceptible to HITH so yes keeping them in nitrates that high will definitely lead to HITH, but its kind of hard to switch to a sump if your tank isnt already drilled so an easier way would be to just would cut the beef heart out of diet entirely, it is unnecessary and not that good for them when fed on a regular basis and fouls up the water really quickly, i would also either keep the sens OR 1-2 of the delhezis and the polii definitely not all of them, delhezis get quite large to have that many of them with other polys and an oscar in a 100g tank, and make sure to do AT LEAST 50% water changes WEEKLY

 

[icherno7]

yes sumps always help because they add to the water volume and so help to dilute the pollutants in the water, and oscars are already very susceptible to HITH so yes keeping them in nitrates that high will definitely lead to HITH, but its kind of hard to switch to a sump if your tank isnt already drilled so an easier way would be to just would cut the beef heart out of diet entirely, it is unnecessary and not that good for them when fed on a regular basis and fouls up the water really quickly, i would also either keep the sens OR 1-2 of the delhezis and the polii definitely not all of them, delhezis get quite large to have that many of them with other polys and an oscar in a 100g tank, and make sure to do AT LEAST 50% water changes WEEKLY

I don't want to get rid of any of the fish and I already do 10% water changes weekly

so what if I stop feeding beef heart add a sump and plants and start doing 50% water changes weekly instead of 10% would the oscar be fine?

 

[japes]

Nitrate is a little high, and as stated, Beefheart isn't part of an ideal diet. Clean, appropriate water is of course the best treatment method, but Nitrates are not the primary concern here.

Pick up a hardness kit and let us know your gH and kH parameters.

so what if I stop feeding beef heart add a sump and plants and start doing 50% water changes weekly instead of 10% would the oscar be fine?

50% is overkill, I imagine 30% will be fine. It's not an automatic case of doing water changes and having the issue disappear though.

 

[perfect_prefect]

that kind of stock and feeding AND YOU ONLY DO 10% W/C WEEKLY?!?!?! that is why your oscar at such a young age has HITH has your tank ever registered under 40ppm nitrates? what kind of test are you using? i would guess the test is wrong or not being done quite right and you have higher nitrates than what you think you do. i reitterate what has already been said stop feeding beefheart, start feeding a higher quality pellet, one with vege content in it for your o, and do a 50% w/c every other day for the next week, partly to get the water quality up to par, partly to get used to doing them, then do an absolute MINIMUM of 1 60-80% w/c every week, you would be better off doing 50% twice a week though, hopefully your fish heals well for you.

 

[icherno7]

that kind of stock and feeding AND YOU ONLY DO 10% W/C WEEKLY?!?!?! that is why your oscar at such a young age has HITH has your tank ever registered under 40ppm nitrates? what kind of test are you using? i would guess the test is wrong or not being done quite right and you have higher nitrates than what you think you do. i reitterate what has already been said stop feeding beefheart, start feeding a higher quality pellet, one with vege content in it for your o, and do a 50% w/c every other day for the next week, partly to get the water quality up to par, partly to get used to doing them, then do an absolute MINIMUM of 1 60-80% w/c every week, you would be better off doing 50% twice a week though, hopefully your fish heals well for you.

I only do 10% a week because all of the fish are under 6 in and I siphon out the waste that is on the substrate daily and there is never any left over food so I never felt the need to check the water after I cycled it until I saw the hith

The kit I use is called freshwater master test kit and it's made by aquarium pharmaceuticals Inc.

 

[Amphilophus88]

I only do 10% a week because all of the fish are under 6 in and I siphon out the waste that is on the substrate daily and there is never any left over food so I never felt the need to check the water after I cycled it until I saw the hith

The kit I use is called freshwater master test kit and it's made by aquarium pharmaceuticals Inc.

Still you should change more than that. I disagree with 60-80% if your fish are under 6 inch, still I'd start with 50% and see how things are going.

 

[Sab_Fan]

I think 50% or greater is probably overkill, although it might be a good idea right now just to get those nitrates down

but I think we can all agree that 10% is certainly too little . . . try bringing it up to 30% weekly for a few weeks and see if that begins to address the problem

if not, then look into giving up some fish . . . we have ALL had to do this at some point, and it's a reality of fish-keeping that you might as well get used to

 

[thedarkone]

50% is overkill, I imagine 30% will be fine.

I think 50% or greater is probably overkill, although it might be a good idea right now just to get those nitrates down.

I totally agree with these guys. I personally don't do more than a 30% at any given time unless something is really wrong with my water chemistry i.e. like this instance of high nitrates.

This just my personal opinion so all you people who do 50% or more water changes a week please don't flame me for saying it. I think that doing more than a 30% a day can possibly mess with the biological filter in the tank, and also potentially stress the fish out because of large change in the water chemistry.

Instead of doing larger water changes weekly I do a 25%-30% changes twice a week.

 

[icherno7]

The lfs owner told me that Hith doesn't kill the Oscar and that my high nitrates couldn't have caused it because hith is caused by a parisite in the fatty tissue of the O's head that starts on the inside of the head and goes out

He told me that they don't die from hith because it's just like a person living with a growth on him/her and not dieing from it

he also told me that plants wouldn't get rid of my nitrate problem they would just help a little and showed me some meds that would get rid of the hith