Nitrate??????

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
You should do WC as much & as often as necessary to keep the water habitable for your fish, which means getting those nitrates down to >20. Are you using RO water?

I mean, discus keepers do 100% daily. Read my sig!
 
Pufferpunk;1318089; said:
You should do WC as much & as often as necessary to keep the water habitable for your fish, which means getting those nitrates down to around 5. I mean, discus keepers do 100% daily! Read my sig!
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Ummm....what about stressing your inhabitants? FW and SW are not the same nor can be compared when it comes to water maintenance...
 
I just did a 30% WC on my large reef tank after not doing one for a month. All my corals/fish are great. I do 50% weekly WC on my 40g reef tank that doesn't have a sump on it (just a HOB fuge)& 90% WC on my Mantis shrimp tank. How can it stress out your inhabitants, by giving them clean, fresh water?

As far as my FW tanks, my discus get 90% weekly & all my other FW tanks get 75% weekly.
 
Pufferpunk;1318117; said:
I just did a 30% WC on my large reef tank after not doing one for a month. All my corals/fish are great. I do 50% weekly WC on my 40g reef tank that doesn't have a sump on it (just a HOB fuge)& 90% WC on my Mantis shrimp tank. How can it stress out your inhabitants, by giving them clean, fresh water?

As far as my FW tanks, my discus get 90% weekly & all my other FW tanks get 75% weekly.
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LOL...read the article... :) Just becasue something works for one persons tank, does not mean the same should be done by all..
 
I read the article & it says nothing in there about shocking the inhabitants of the tank with larger WC. Even after his statement: "Some writers advocate an occasional massive change (50% or more) as a stop-gap measure to dilute metabolites, nitrates in particular", Bob doesn't say it's a bad thing. I have been doing this for over 30 years now. I have 3 reef tanks going at the moment. 1 BW tank & 5 FW. All completely sucessful. BTW, I work on Bob Fenners Crew at WWM.
 
I'm not a dude & I don't say I have all the answers but I have been doing this a very long time with great sucess.
 
Anyway... the problem here is that the OP has nitrates that he is trying to reduce. Obviously, daily 15% WC isn't bringing it down. Other than setting up a fuge with algae to eat the nitrates, the only possible way to remove them is by upping the WC. Whether it "stresses" the fish or not (I believe is doesn't), the stress of living in high nitrates will definately cause problems & needs to be fixed.
 
Just curious, are you only doing water changes, or are you using a gravel vac to pick up all the left over food etc. Seeing as though the main reason for high nitrates is food waste try and get the gravel as clean as possible, I suspect this may be the reason for the high nitrate level. If your only changing the water at the top of the tank then your still going to have the problem of food waste dirtying up the water.

:)
 
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