nitrate question

[esoxlucius]

I'm led to believe that both ammonia and nitrite levels should be 0ppm in an healthy tank, which mine are, and always are. I'm also led to believe that nitrate should NOT be 0ppm and that in an healthy tank nitrate should be around the 20-30ppm. Surely if you are spot on with your water changes then your nitrate should always read 0ppm too, as mine always does. Am i missing something or am i just **** hot at doing my water changes at the correct time just before my nitrate starts to creep up?

 

[tlindsey]

Just a tip, shake the hell out of your test bottles for nitrate. Yes you are right a well established aquarium should show signs of nitrates.

 

[ehh]

What test kit are you using?

 

[welsher7]

Your test should always shows some nitrate. If you are getting a 0ppm reading I would think the test method maybe inaccurate. Some test kits do expire and some test kits just aren't all that accurate.

Are you testing before or after the water change?

You want to keep nitrate as low as you can, I think most aim to keep it under 30ppm.

 

[xraycer]

To get nitrate to stay at 0 by just doing water changes, you would have to be doing something along the line of 100% w/c every other day (that's also excluding any live plant filtration). If you do anything less than this you should, at the very least, have some trace of nitrate

What exactly is your water change protocol?

 

[convict360]

If you're lightly stocked, and well versed on water changing regularly; nitrates under 10ppm wouldn't surprise me, in which case the test possibly isnt picking it up

 

[MikebNJ]

Don't be scared of 30ppm and under nitrates unless you have rays and other very delicate expensive fish.

 

[HarleyK]

Tap water can have 44 ppm nitrates max as per EPA.

 

[duanes]

My nitrate level used to hang between 2-5ppm, with 30% water changes every other day, and planted sumps. My tap water, because it is chloraminated had an average nitrate concentration of 2ppm.
I would measure tap and my tanks concentration on a spectrophotometer at the lab where I worked.
Another part of my job, was to measured the nitrate concentration of the natural waters (Lake Michigan) coming into the plant, which usually hovered at <1ppm.
This became the benchmark goal for my tanks.
There is some aquaculture research (sorry forgotten where exactly it came from) that elevated nitrate (20ppm and above) in closed system water provides a substrate on and in fishes bodies, that allow pathogenic bacteria easier access to create infection.
This made sense to me after seeing all the HITH and other diseases that seem so common in aquaria.
So to me, a goal of 0 (or close to it) is not unrealistic.

 

[THQ]

Nitrates truly at 0 is only possible if you have some sort of denitrification process going on in your tank ie., heavily planted?