High Nitrate

[Mystix212]

Buy a liquid test kit would be the best thing. I hate using test strips, never 100% correct. If your food is being sucked up the filter, then make the feeding schedules last longer, IE put a few pellets in at a time and wait for those to be eaten, then add some more.

 

[ShadowBass]

All my weekly w/c I use the python I have, so I do vac gravel every week.

Yes I have check water supply on the day of the 60% w/c and it read 0 nitrate. Bderick I was considering the same thing.

Phoenix no missing fish and no real plants only plastic.

Shadow I havent tried cleaning media or filter because I read that canisters should be change like every month or so and I guess I can go clean my media for the emp400. I do 30% w/c every week and as stated above I always use vac. I break the Emp400 every month or so(did it 2 weeks ago) and I clean media every 2 weeks (guess I can do it every week). No carbon.

john I say its bad because it came from 0 to 20 in one day.

Oh I also did some test on my 29 gal tank w/ tetras, cats and gouramies (about 12 fish total) and it came out to about 10ppmm and I just did a 50% w/c yesterday is it normal? feed 1 per day. Leaning toward bad test kit but dont see why it would be bad. It worked well until now. Thanks for the advice Ill do it now.

The once per month maintanance on the canisters is a general guideline, not a rule. I break them down no LESS than once a month. Regardless it doesn't sound like that is a big problem, but the fact that you're only doing 30% weekly. You may want to try 30% bi-weekly if you want the nitrates lower. You can also try running some carbon temporarily.
Yes, I would start cleaning the polishing media weekly rather than bi weekly. Especially in the emperors the cartridges can benefit from being rinsed off fairly often. (Don't mess with the biological media, I'm sure you know that, but just making sure)

Your test kit may or may not be bad, but it's not odd for the nitrates to be different on seperate tanks. It could be your handling of the test kit also. Are you following the directions exactly? Nitrates should rise slowly until you do a water change, then they will drop. How fast they rise again depends on your feeding, the waste being produced by the fish, and the amount of waste decaying in the tank and filters.

 

[Wolf3101]

I wouldn't complain about 20ppm... Thats the normal level in most of our tanks. Water changes are scheduled for when it hit's 40ppm but even thats a bit excessive.

 

[ShadowBass]

I also think it's a bit excessive, but who am I to question someone for wanting to keep their water quality TOO good, lol.

 

[Terrorizing Cichlid]

Ok thanks and my nitrates are now at 10ppmm and I'll continue with the suggestions. Oh shadowbass yes I do follow the direction for test kit exactly. Sorry for waiting so long to reply.