How long do you think this tank would last?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Hello; I think I posted on a couple of your past threads. They were similar to this thread in ways. Members are giving decent feedback but the basic problem appears to be the same as it was in the past threads. You have bad tank source water.
If I recall correctly we eventually got to the poor source water in the other threads. You start with higher nitrates in the source water than a tank should have.
That no person drinks the water you use for the fish seems a clue.
My suggestion is try to find a way to pre-treat the source water or find another source for the tank water.
good luck anyway.
 
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giar said:
I understand that you are giving me good advices, since i asked for it.. i know im dealing with nitrate problem, so would you please give me solution for my problem?..

I am goin to use my old 60gal as a sump and add plants in there. That maybe can reduce the nitrate..

But if by any means you are saying i am also overstocked just by the number of nitrate it self and only it on my tank #2 (60ppm) , a 285 gal with only 1 aro and 2 pups rays are already considered overstock, it just doesnt adds up to me.. maybe i am wrong , please enlighten me.
Click to expand...

-1 full grown giraffe catfish can produce the same amount of nitrate as 55 full grown black bar disk tetras

-1 full grown pacu can produce the same amount of nitrate as 25 full grown oscars

Bio load has nothing to do with how many fish are in a tank. It has to do with how large the fish are that are in the tank. In a tank with a smaller bio load (e.g., 20 6" tetras, 20 2" cories, and 20 3" cichlids), and enough plants, the nitrate levels would actually decline between water changes, and the water changes would be smaller and less often.

You're unlucky in your water. Pre-treating the water, reducing the bio load, adding plants, reducing the protein content in the food are all possible options.
 
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I think the problem here is plants. In a full-blown aquaponics setup, you run your FS (fishtank) at 1-2lbs of fish per gallon, and many struggle to keep their nitrate above 20-25 ppm anyway (high nitrate is good for plants.) I am running a 10g with 25 half grown guppies, planted with both emergent plants in the tank and plants stuck in the hob. 3 months of no water change & 0ppm straight across. My low tech planted 55 with duckweed gets 40% weekly WC minimum with no nitrate from the tap and I can't get such good numbers. I am not advocating 3x 10 inch fish per gallon, but I am saying that the equation is this simple: Disregarding fancy units like ATS, denitrators, carbon dosing, etc., there are only 2 things to pull nitrate out of the water: WC and plants. If you are getting nitrate out of the tap, though, WC becomes borderline useless. The only solution becomes plants, and a lot of them. You want a pound of plant growth per pound of food put into the system. Technically a little less, because of outgassing, but you also have to figure the nitrates from your tap. Some good plants are: pothos, spider, wandering jew, ivy of any kind, lucky bamboo, lettuce, they will all be happy with their roots constantly wet. Spider Plants aer great because they grow fine underwater as long as some leaves stick out. All the plants I have mentioned are, IMO, very attractive, and will grow in low light , if not well. If I remember I will post pics when i get home.
 
Drstrangelove said:
-1 full grown giraffe catfish can produce the same amount of nitrate as 55 full grown black bar disk tetras

-1 full grown pacu can produce the same amount of nitrate as 25 full grown oscars

Bio load has nothing to do with how many fish are in a tank. It has to do with how large the fish are that are in the tank. In a tank with a smaller bio load (e.g., 20 6" tetras, 20 2" cories, and 20 3" cichlids), and enough plants, the nitrate levels would actually decline between water changes, and the water changes would be smaller and less often.

You're unlucky in your water. Pre-treating the water, reducing the bio load, adding plants, reducing the protein content in the food are all possible options.
Click to expand...
+1.
Once those rays get bigger they will be bio load factories
 
J. H. said:
there are only 2 things to pull nitrate out of the water: WC and plants. If you are getting nitrate out of the tap, though, WC becomes borderline useless. The only solution becomes plants, and a lot of them. You
Click to expand...

Hello; Let me add to this that the plants will need to be harvested, that is portions taken out of the setups, at a pretty good rate. From reading other threads about using plants to reduce nitrates that seems to be the way it needs to go.
For example most of my tanks are planted but the plants are relatively slow growing and in the past I was not very diligent about removing dead or damaged leaves. That means that as the plant material would decay in the tank whatever they had removed from the tank was put back into the water. I now more promptly remove dead or broken off plant parts. I also look for damaged or dying leaves and clip them off and remove them.

For the plants to remove nitrates from the water the nitrates will have to become incorporated into the mass of the plant parts. Some fairly large portion of that plant mass will likely need to be removed (harvested) on a regular basis.
An initial thought is that perhaps a large tub might be filled with water and throw some non rooted /free floating plants in. Perhaps a few small fish to eat the mosquitos down or maybe a screen cover. That way you might get the nitrates down and then have low nitrate water for the tanks???

I think this was asked before but am not sure what the answer was . (I may have forgotten) It seems possible that along with high nitrates in the tap water there may also be other undesirable stuff in the water. The test kits used for testing water in aquariums do not test for these other things, at least this is my thinking. If you do have some other nasties in the water in addition to the nitrates it may be that the only option left is to acquire another source of tank water. Has the tap water been tested by some good lab for these possible other contaminants?
 
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Done.. i just got photos plant to absorb nitrate .. do i have the setup correctly?

The roots dont submerged in the water, because 1- the oscars will destroy it, 2- it mess the tank up..

the water outlet from my fx6 go to the plant first then it goes to the tank, would that be ok?IMG_7418.JPG
IMG_7416.JPG IMG_7417.JPG
 
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IMG_7428.JPG I put black sticker there so it hides the plants, also to cover my water level.. well right now i need to top up the water a bit anyway, today is my WC schedule and i will try 75%
 
That's perfect. The pothos will do fine, and reduce nitrate, but I personally don't think one little pothos is enough.
 
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