Nitrate 40 ppm, is this ok

[kdrun76]

A 30% change and 50% change back to back are not the same as an 80% change. When you did the 50% change, only 70% of the water in the tank was original water.
First change 30%
Second change 50% x .7=35% change

So a total of 65% of the water was changed.


Yes do weekly 50% changes. Anytime your nitrates are over 20ppm (no matter what size the tank is) do a 50% water change. In the larger tank it will take longer for the nitrates to reach 20ppm, but when they do....50% change.

Plants do help to pull nitrates out of the water.

Flaw in the plan: DOC or dissolved organic compounds build up in the water. These are hormones and phermones released by the fish, amino acids released by the fish and their food, any of about a zillion biological products that accumulate in the water. In large quantities, they are toxic. There is NOT a hobby level test kit for DOC's. Even the commercial labs have a hard time measuring them. Nitrates are a good indicator of the level of DOC's. When the nitrates are high, its safe to assume the DOC's are high. If you use plants to lower the nitrates and don't do frequent water changes, your DOC's will build up and you won't know it.

To avoid it.... weekly 50% water change is the minimum recommended for nearly all tanks. If you had a really low bio load, 50% changes every 10-12 days would be ok.

 

[JoeDizzleMPLS]

you definitely don't need special lights or co2 for plants to pull nitrates out of the water... on my low light/low tech setups, my nitrates rarely get to 10ppm, they usually hover right around 5ppm or less. some plants are known as being nutrient hogs and will eat up nitrates faster than they can be produced in your tank, but most low light/low maintenance plants will still provide a noticeable difference.

 

[duke33]

I find this sticky to be very informative, check it out. http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94937

 

[Diogenes]

25 ppm or above is considered toxic for fish.

 

[Bderick67]

25 ppm or above is considered toxic for fish.

If this were the case then most of the captive kept fish in the world would be dead.

 

[justonemoretank]

Any waste buildup is "toxic" to some degree. Nitrate is less "toxic" than Ammonia, or Nitrite, which is why there are acceptable levels other than zero for Nitrate. As I said earlier, 20 or below is what I tailor my water change/ filter cleaning regimen toward. However, there is no reason to mislead the OP into believing that he or she is creating an environment which will cause fish death or illness by keeping Nitrates at 25 or 30 ppm. It is not ideal, but then, 0 Nitrate would be ideal, and that's hard to achieve.

 

[JoeDizzleMPLS]

Any waste buildup is "toxic" to some degree. Nitrate is less "toxic" than Ammonia, or Nitrite, which is why there are acceptable levels other than zero for Nitrate. As I said earlier, 20 or below is what I tailor my water change/ filter cleaning regimen toward. However, there is no reason to mislead the OP into believing that he or she is creating an environment which will cause fish death or illness by keeping Nitrates at 25 or 30 ppm. It is not ideal, but then, 0 Nitrate would be ideal, and that's hard to achieve.

agreed... 40 ppm won't kill most fish, especially a fish as tough as a piranha.

a reading of 40-50 ppm of nitrate is basically a warning sign that you need to fix something that is going on in your tank because if it gets much higher, you will most likely be dealing with a more serious situation.

as i said earlier, changing to 50% weekly water changes would help keep your nitrate levels in check, feeding a bit less will help to create less nitrates, and adding a few more plants will help to eat up extra nitrates...

 

[kdrun76]

25 ppm or above is considered toxic for fish.

Its not the nitrates themselves that cause the problem. Nitrates greatly impede the production of white blood cell which over time renders the immune system useless. Once the immune system is shut down, its only a matter of time until some germ/parasite/ buggy gets in there and kills the defenseless fish.

Fish can survive a LONG time in nitrates of 200ppm...as long as they don't get exposed to ICH or something worse... they live on. Personally I would rather have my fish a little more capable of fending for themselves. Keep the nitrates under 20.

 

[ballinouttacntrol]

I find this sticky to be very informative, check it out. http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94937

That was a good read. Thank You

 

[Otherone]

Causes of Nitra problems I've had in the past 25+ years:

-Too many fish in an uncycled tank
-Filling tank with cold water crashing the cycle
-Changing the filter media too often creating a never ending recycle
-Not testing and removing Chloramine from my tapwater
-Overfeeding and leaving too much uneaten food in the tank
-Too many feeders in the tank for extened periods of time
-not regularly cleaning the filtration tubes
-not thourghly cleaning the substrate
-Over medicating with Quick Ich without water changes
-Assuming a missing fish was eaten while he lay rotting behind a rock

* And now for the really really stupid crap*(gonna get banned for this)
-Throwing a chicken carcess into my RBP tank (was cool for 5 min. then wow what a mess - RBP's fine)
-Throwing an open can of tuna into the RPB tank (truely the stupidist thing I've ever done took forever to clean it out - the cloud OMG the cloud!- RBP's not happy but Fine)
- Grabbing the wrong bottle of API after a massive water change, I grabbed the Water Clear mistaking it for the De-chlorinator while treating for Ich in an uncycled tank (RIP 5 Pygocentrus Cariba)