At my wit's end with water quality... any suggestions?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Out here everyone is allowed to send their tap water in for testing once a year at your municipal water. Worth checking to see if you also have that available to you. You get a spread sheet of everything from your sample. If not yeah, a university student or something can help you. I think you've got a lot of biological media going on which is good. More the better. But it's worth maybe investing in switching out the bioballs with seachem matrix which never needs replacing either. I see it for $25- @ kensfish.com for 4liters of it. It's way more efficient then bioballs, easier to clean when actually needed. The polyfill is good too as addition, i've used that for years. I always preech to never use carbon, but in your case it might be needed for now, or some purigen. Keep in mind too carbon is really only efficient for a week, literally after that you can run into it causing issues.

A lot of your issues i've seen with people with well water, there is definitely something not right going on with your municipal water. Maybe it is good at the source where they are testing it, but there's a lot of distance between them, and your house, thats why i suggest having your tap sample tested. For your nitrates to sky rocket like that is usually too much bio-load but with your water change schedule, and amounts, your filtration, the plants that almost rules that out completely. Mine is stable at 5-15 max ever, 150ppm is insane :/
 
You should be able to access your cities annual water quality reports on line, by typing your "city, state and water quality report" into google. If the city is large enough, there may be several years available to compare, and see what changes (if any) have occurred in source water, or treatment technique. I would have done it, but your city is not in your profile.
My city lists over 200 different components that were/are tested for, but test requirements are based on population, my water supplier serves over 1 million people.
I have chloramine in my tap water and use straight sodium or calcium thiosulfate to remove the chlorine part, the bio-bacteria take care of the rest.
 
Ryan have you tried any Ammonia removing resins in your system? Prime, actavated carbon & an ammonia remover might help. Unfortunatly this will somthing that has to be done long term, unless you go to a full R/O system $$$.
 
CrypticLifeStyle said:
I'd wonder first what his ammonia levels are if any. I didnt see him mention ammonia.
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As an indirect result of the declorination process any residual ammonia would need to be delt with. Ammonia, nitrite, nitrate. Ryan said his levels would spike so......it would stand to reason there is ammonia in some form that is not be addressed causing the cycle.
 
Not necessarily. Ammonia isnt the only thing that causes Nitrates. Nitrates can come natural right out of the tap, or many other factors. He's using prime, and giving his filtration, and maintenance schedule i'm iffy about any non-treated factors. With discoloration/organic compounds/ discharge of the water, and such high levels of nitrates i've never even seen in tanks going through their first cycles IMO think there's other culprits involved. I'd be really interested in what his tap analysis would be opposed to municipal water site testing says it is.
 
I think Bderick67 & ecoli73 might be onto something...can you check to see if your water supply has an excessive amount of chloromine added. If excess chloromine(chlorine+ammonia) is added, the extra ammonia would make it seem like the tank is heavily overstocked and the BB in your filters is breaking it down to nitrate.
 
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