Cycling ? Thought I knew it all . . .

[xraycer]

I just cant get my Nitrates down almost undetectable levels , This guy told me my 180 was over filtered and by using the method of mixing my conditioners while adding tap/city water at same time to my tank was sheerly killing my good bacteria and never allowing my tank enough good stuff .

This fella calmed that if I had a whopping amount of good bacteria in my tank all my Ammonia nitrite nitrate would all be 0ppm , I find that hard to believe that he clams he can grow such a colony of healthy bacteria that he only needs to change 30% and never more and every other week mind you to run a balanced tank with 0ppm across the board .

TO SUM IT UP SHORT : If there is a gigantic amount of healthy bacteria (Can you get away with not changing your watter as frequent while keeping your PPM's down to nill)

A cycled tank absolutely does not breakdown nitrate, plants and water changes are the easiest and most practical way to bring down nitrate level. A properly cycled tank will bring ammonia and nitrite down to 0 not nitrate. Nitrate levels of less than 40 is about the "norm" for most non-planted tanks

 

[Simcan]

To jump on this before someone else does, xraycer is correct...it is true that there are some anaerobic (i.e., needs to live in non-oxygenated environments) bacteria, but it is not feasible to have a population of these bacteria in your tank. I do think plants can help slow down the accumulation of nitrate by using it, and I am one of the converts to Purigen and I use it like crazy, but ultimately water changes are the way to go, the more the merrier, notwithstanding whatever else you are doing. The other point is that high nitrate is a good indicator that you have not been changing enough water, but there is more accumulating in the closed system of your tank than just nitrogenous waste. Like they say, the solution to pollution is dilution.

But to answer the specific question, practically, you won't get nitrates to nil. That is the target, but you should not get fussed if you keep it at 10 or even up to 40 PPM though I would strive to do better than that, personally.

 

[Heyguy74]

I just cant get my Nitrates down almost undetectable levels , This guy told me my 180 was over filtered and by using the method of mixing my conditioners while adding tap/city water at same time to my tank was sheerly killing my good bacteria and never allowing my tank enough good stuff .

This fella calmed that if I had a whopping amount of good bacteria in my tank all my Ammonia nitrite nitrate would all be 0ppm , I find that hard to believe that he clams he can grow such a colony of healthy bacteria that he only needs to change 30% and never more and every other week mind you to run a balanced tank with 0ppm across the board .

TO SUM IT UP SHORT : If there is a gigantic amount of healthy bacteria (Can you get away with not changing your watter as frequent while keeping your PPM's down to nill)

ok the guy doesn't understand the nitrogen cycle in a freshwater tank. Or he does an he's not being straight with you. For us nitrates are the end result of the nitrogen cycle. We remove them via water changes. You can also keep them low or almost 0 with a heavily planted tank. There are bacteria that convert nitrates to nitrogen. However these are
anaerobic bacteria. In a lake they would live deep in the mud at the bottom. In a saltwater tank they would be inside the live rock or a deep sand bed. Most of us freshwater guys, don't have the proper places to grow these bacteria. I'm sure there are a few other ways to grow these bacteria as well. again it's not practical for most of us.

I will answer your question this way. Water changes remove other things besides nitrates. Such as hormones. We use nitrates as a guide because they are fairly easy and cheap to test. Fresh water is a fishes best friend.

 

[master.k.]

ok the guy doesn't understand the nitrogen cycle in a freshwater tank. Or he does an he's not being straight with you. For us nitrates are the end result of the nitrogen cycle. We remove them via water changes. You can also keep them low or almost 0 with a heavily planted tank. There are bacteria that convert nitrates to nitrogen. However these are
anaerobic bacteria. In a lake they would live deep in the mud at the bottom. In a saltwater tank they would be inside the live rock or a deep sand bed. Most of us freshwater guys, don't have the proper places to grow these bacteria. I'm sure there are a few other ways to grow these bacteria as well. again it's not practical for most of us.

I will answer your question this way. Water changes remove other things besides nitrates. Such as hormones. We use nitrates as a guide because they are fairly easy and cheap to test. Fresh water is a fishes best friend.

I find the feed back to be in the 100% range of the knowledge I currently knew about keeping watter quality I learned from research and reading up on this forum/sight years ago .

What sparked my interest to open a thread was I spoke to a guy at his place of residence while picking up a fish to add to my collection , He has multiple tanks some very large , lots of $Money into his collection . "He" was very pushy on explaining how to maintain healthy watter prams and made me second guess myself and my vast knowledge (He was very convincing threw speech) I should have called him out to use A test kit so I can see for my self .
I assume if I was leaving a part of info out this would be it .

 

[xraycer]

Next time you're over this guy's house, try to grab a water sample from one of his tanks when he's not around. See if he actually "walk the walk" or just full of it.

 

[ZEROPILOT]

All of my ammonia and Nitrite, Nitrate levels are about zero and I do all of my tanks with a five gallon bucket from the tap and treated in the bucket. 25-35% every two weeks. That's a LOT of buckets. I'm reading.........

 

[Aquanero]

I run water stright from the tap into the tank I add Seachem Safe while the tank is filling up and don't wipe out my nitrifying bacteria doing so. A typically cycled tank would have readings of 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and 10 ppm of nitrates as an example. It is impossibile to have a tank with absolute 0 nitrates as it is the the end of the nitrogen cycle and is removed by water changes et al. The reason we change water is to remove nitrates and keep the levels within an acceptable range ie below 10 ppm. Each tank/system is different depending on bio-load & bio-capacity of the system. In theory if you had and 265 gallon tank with one guppy in it you might only need to change water once a year the same tank with 4 Pacus stuffed into it might need the water changed twice a day, depending on the amount of food, waste produced filteration etc. The numbers dictate the amount and frequency of water changes, fiter miedia cleanning etc.

In order for a 50% water change to kill your entire colony of nitrifying bacteria it would have to containe much hgher levels than what I'm seeing here http://www.dwsd.org/downloads_n/customer_service/customer_information/water_quality_report.pdf

Post your water parameters before a water change and again the day (24 hours) after. Do the water change like you usually do it don't change anything. Lets see what you get.