Can inverts that live under the sand, and die cause problems?

[Pazzoman]

Hey,

I'm curious because if leaving a fish in a tank causes decay which makes your tank cycle again. Is their a problem if a horse shoe crab or snails that live under sand die?

Also my aunt's main tank has high nitrate 200!!!!
She is confuse on why is it this high. She does filter maintenance water changes and such.

Last but not least, do I need to change the carbon out of a fluval fx5 or do I just rinse it like the others, and keep the same media permanent?

Sorry for random things in one thread....also check out my sig if interested or know anyone interested.

 

[Heathd]

Hey,

I'm curious because if leaving a fish in a tank causes decay which makes your tank cycle again. Is their a problem if a horse shoe crab or snails that live under sand die?
Yes.

Also my aunt's main tank has high nitrate 200!!!!
She is confuse on why is it this high. She does filter maintenance water changes and such.
Start looking in between rocks for dead stuff. As a last resort, look in the sand bed if she had sand sifting inverts.

Last but not least, do I need to change the carbon out of a fluval fx5 or do I just rinse it like the others, and keep the same media permanent?
Carbon will exhaust and no longer be effective, so its best to remove it after that point.

Sorry for random things in one thread....also check out my sig if interested or know anyone interested.

....

 

[Pazzoman]

Thanks btw I found out her kit was old and her nitrate is perfectly fine. Also I guess I change carbon monthly and rinse the others at different times so i have beneficial bacteria in the filter?

 

[overcooked]

Has she checked what her ammonia levels are like?

 

[Morledzep]

Thanks btw I found out her kit was old and her nitrate is perfectly fine. Also I guess I change carbon monthly and rinse the others at different times so i have beneficial bacteria in the filter?

changing carbon monthly will get very expensive.. and you don't need carbon to keep the water sparkly. it helps A LOT.. but good filtration will do it just fine on a properly cycled tank. i don't keep carbon in most of my tanks, but those that do have carbon, i change it once or sometimes twice a year. and i rinse it well and dry it in the sun and reuse it the next time i change the carbon.

carbon doesn't carry BB, that's what bio-media is for, like bio-rings, or bio-balls, or scrubbies. i use ceramic bio-rings in my canister filters, and i never rinse them. when i do filter maintenance i change out the filter pads, and pull out the baskets of media and rinse out the canister. then i reasemble it. and reinstall it. i never run tap water on any of the media in the baskets because it's all either chemical or bio-filtration and tap water with chloramines causes more harm than good.

if you feel the need to rinse something, take 5 gallons of tank water out in a bucket and rinse whatever is going back into the filter in that. it'll save ya lots of heartache down the road.

 

[Pazzoman]

cool thanks btw the same thing with her tank our ammonia is zero as usual. Also her ammonia spiked but isn't as bad as mine now.....mine is blood red!!

Also how dangerous is nitrate towards fish and inverts?......probably kills inverts and not really fish....well I'm probably going to do a 30 - 50% water change and purchase some pants to eat off the algae.

 

[Morledzep]

cool thanks btw the same thing with her tank our ammonia is zero as usual. Also her ammonia spiked but isn't as bad as mine now.....mine is blood red!!

Also how dangerous is nitrate towards fish and inverts?......probably kills inverts and not really fish....well I'm probably going to do a 30 - 50% water change and purchase some pants to eat off the algae.

the three things you have to worry about are ammonia, nitrite and nitrates..

if you have ammonia in a cycled tank you probably have a dead fish or rotten meat somewhere in the tank.

nitrites are by far the most dangerous, even small levels of nitrite can kill fish, it's part of the cycling process, but if your tank is properly cycled you should have no nitrite. if you do, your BB has crashed and you need to do massive water changes, clean your filter and add some BB from another source or you could lose your fish quite quickly.

nitrates is the natural by-product of the BB life cycle. high amounts can hurt your fish over the long run, but it won't kill them outright like ammonia and nitrites will. nitrates are easy to control with regular water changes and in most well maintained tanks it should run between 20 ppm and 60 ppm. in seriously overstocked tanks it would run a bit higher.

if you're serious about your water quality you should look for a TDS meter (that is Total Disolved Solids), i worry more about TDS than anything else, it is a sign of a seriously dirty tank. i do 30% water changes every time the TDS goes over 400 according to my meter.

the trouble with the low limit i've set for my tanks is that the water coming out of my tap has higher TDS than what i consider dirty water in my tanks, i have an RO/DI filter that removes all but 3 -5 ppm TDS (and all the chloramines and crap that the city water is required to have that will kill my fish) that i do my water changes with.

 

[Pufferpunk]

Canister filters on SW tanks are considered nitrate factories. How much live rock is in there? Does she haver a good protein skimmer?

 

[FLESHY]

Pazzo...you need to start getting witnesses and documenting the nitrate levels on aquariums you know of!

Im sure that there is a place in the Guinness book of world records for you my friend.

Just messing.

 

[thisissimple]

if you're serious about your water quality you should look for a TDS meter (that is Total Disolved Solids), i worry more about TDS than anything else, it is a sign of a seriously dirty tank. i do 30% water changes every time the TDS goes over 400 according to my meter.

the trouble with the low limit i've set for my tanks is that the water coming out of my tap has higher TDS than what i consider dirty water in my tanks, i have an RO/DI filter that removes all but 3 -5 ppm TDS (and all the chloramines and crap that the city water is required to have that will kill my fish) that i do my water changes with.

Hey, I am intrigued by this. I have never heard of anyone using this for saltwater, and am curious about how it works. The TDS of natural seawater is like 30,000ppm to 40,000ppm, so how do you judge the range for salt water?