High Nitrate

[Ansorgii]

duanes those plants are sure nice when you have a garden in a tropical climate, but a lot of us don't. I live in an urban industrial area where plants can't grow for months.

Those mangroves of you dont even grow in the summer here, I tried

I can get by with my indoor plants, but I keep a very low density tank and have the space for them. No real Monstertank can be sustained like that.

If you can't rely on your tapwater reactors are the most costeffective way to get rid of nitrat for people like me.

If the og poster hasn't been scared off yet I can give him some advice, I experimentet a long time when I still had stingrays.

 

[Backfromthedead]

It's interesting to me, that many aquarists try all the most expensive, time consuming, and user unfriendly strategies to combat nitrate, when the simplest solution is just water changes.
And especially with a little planning can be done quickly and easily.
When I lived in the states. I had about 20 tanks, adding up to a couple thousand gallons. and after buying a little cheap PVC, drilling them, and using sumps, could turn a valve. and do water changes on all of them effortlessly and almost at once, discarding a lot of old water in less than a half hour, while watering the lawn, and vegetable garden at the same time.
View attachment 1535607

I have a fishkeeping buddy who was a big slacker on water changes for awhile. I would constantly berate him, while he claimed it was too much work to change 50% of his 100g tank once a week. Turns out he had just never thought or learned to pump the water out with a hose, but was hauling buckets of water back and forth lol.

Maybe OP lives in an area where water is scarce, regulated due to seasonal shortages or what have you.

Otherwise maybe doing research for fishkeeping in space.

 

[dogofwar]

Duane lived in the tropical paradise of Milwaukee prior to Panama Pothos don't need a ton of light - natural or man made - and do a great job. Same with peace lilies, monstera and a lot of others.

duanes those plants are sure nice when you have a garden in a tropical climate, but a lot of us don't. I live in an urban industrial area where plants can't grow for months.

Those mangroves of you dont even grow in the summer here, I tried

I can get by with my indoor plants, but I keep a very low density tank and have the space for them. No real Monstertank can be sustained like that.

If you can't rely on your tapwater reactors are the most costeffective way to get rid of nitrat for people like me.

If the og poster hasn't been scared off yet I can give him some advice, I experimentet a long time when I still had stingrays.

 

[Charney]

It's interesting to me, that many aquarists try all the most expensive, time consuming, and user unfriendly strategies to combat nitrate, when the simplest solution is just water changes.
And especially with a little planning can be done quickly and easily.
When I lived in the states. I had about 20 tanks, adding up to a couple thousand gallons. and after buying a little cheap PVC, drilling them, and using sumps, could turn a valve. and do water changes on all of them effortlessly and almost at once, discarding a lot of old water in less than a half hour, while watering the lawn, and vegetable garden at the same time.
View attachment 1535607

how did you fill your tanks? That is my current bottle neck

 

[Ansorgii]

I keep my tank clean with pothos living another 600km more north than Milwaukee. I know that its possible. I am just saying that not everyone has the space for that, and that if you want to keep a tank with stuff like stingray low in nitrat, a reactor is just way more effective than the greenhouse you would need for that.

If I would need to replace 1000l of water a week, that would be 25g of nitrat for me, that is easily 1 kg of plant matter. A joke in a garden but not inside.

Duane lived in the tropical paradise of Milwaukee prior to Panama Pothos don't need a ton of light - natural or man made - and do a great job. Same with peace lilies, monstera and a lot of others.

 

[TwoHedWlf]

how did you fill your tanks? That is my current bottle neck

Straight from the nearest sink is the easiest, most you can get a fitting to connect to a hose running into the tank.

 

[Joshuakahan]

I have been battling off the scope high nitrates in a 500 gal predator tank. I have adjusted/lowered food levels, tried NOPOX, reactors, and using a large Paxbellum. I am still struggling/failing. Any suggestions?

I don’t know how this would work on something this big or how much you would need, but I run chemipure blue on my nano reef and I can’t get nitrates no matter how hard I try. Zero every time

 

[Joshuakahan]

I have a fishkeeping buddy who was a big slacker on water changes for awhile. I would constantly berate him, while he claimed it was too much work to change 50% of his 100g tank once a week. Turns out he had just never thought or learned to pump the water out with a hose, but was hauling buckets of water back and forth lol.

Maybe OP lives in an area where water is scarce, regulated due to seasonal shortages or what have you.

Otherwise maybe doing research for fishkeeping in space.

Haha, sounds like me up until 3 years ago when I finally got a Python, then my number of tanks increased a lot

 

[ruincccc]

Haha, sounds like me up until 3 years ago when I finally got a Python, then my number of tanks increased a lot

lmao

 

[duanes]

how did you fill your tanks? That is my current bottle neck

I built a web of PVC or tubing around the fish room, coming off a manifold at the tap, leading around the with a separate line for sending new water to each sump,

As It evolved it had a drip line to finger test water for temp.
Because this was in Milwaukee, in winter as the warm water in the water heater was used up, the tap water would drop into the 40s'F, so I could flip a switch on the manifold to feed the colder water to Uruguayan tanks.
The finger test line, had a bucket below with new sand, for substrate that needed rinsing.

I always liked to feed sumps, instead of new water straight to tanks, for better temp blend, and where dechlor could be added at that point.
I put a check/float valve on each line to sump flow in case I got distracted to prevent overflowing.
Below, is one of the sumps, where you can see the (red) float valve, if the sump became full, the red float would rise to block incoming water flow.


The float valves are normally used in cattle watering troughs, so bought from a farm equipment suppler cheaply.