Nitrates in Tap.

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nfored

nfored

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Apr 4, 2008
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So I am starting my research and I see 5 - 10 ppm nitrate as the max. So my tap water has 20 and I have struggled to keep my other tanks at 40 or lower.

So this seems to be a problem. I am not sure if R/O+DI will remove nitrates? and if it did I am not sure what all I would have to add back into the R/O to make it okay.

The other solution is A algae scrubber, but my fear with that is water changes, if I have to change 50% a week then that would be 10ppm after the water change. I could use a drip system combind with the algae scrubber, but since I have never used a scrubber I am not sure what type of rebond time there is after cleaning.

Does anyone else have this problem?
 
Nitrates in tap are a common problem. I think the only thing you can do is get an RO/DI unit if you want to get 5-10ppm in the tank. While an algae scrubber will help, adding tapwater right back with 20ppm of nitrates defeats the purpose. I just installed mine on my discus tank recently.

It will remove everything, including the essential minerals. An RO filter will give you 1-20ppm of TDS, depending on the TDS out of the tap. To get it to 0ppm, you'll need to add a DI filter. This is the purest water you can get.

You'll need to re-mineralize the pure water to be able to maintain the GH needed for your fish's osmotic regulation. I use Kent's R/O Right. You add it to your pure water depending on the fish you're keeping and water you want. Less scoops for very soft water (discus), and more scoops for hard water (african cichlids).
 
I used the liquid R/O right when I first started fish keeping and felt like it would bankrupt me on a 55 gallon. Guess I should start saving so I can stock pile for this tank. I remember I was so excited to get the ro unit then went to literally every pet store I could think of and they all looked at me with this blank look when I asked for ro water treatment, even the stores that sold RO UNITs??? When I finally found some locally I bought all of it. still have a bottle I used one capful out of.


Have you looked into mixing of the r/o with the r/o waste to get the proper water chemistry?
 
Yeah, it may start to get expensive. Right now I have the powder version, I'll have to look into buying the larger sizes. And to be honest, right now I'm using pure RO water on the 190g since my TDS and GH was so high. Before I started with RO water, my GH was around 12, which is very hard water! Now it's down in the 5s and TDS is about 320ish. Once my GH and TDS gets very low for wild discus I'll start adding the RO Right. Right now I'm changing 40g of water each day.

I did want to mix RO waste with pure water to get the proper mix, but it would be too difficult for my setup, since I use a semi-automatic water changer with an aging barrel that refills automatically. I would need to set up two additional 55g barrels. One to collect the waste water, one for pure water, and another to mix. Or I'd need to manually mix waste and pure to get the ratio I needed, then figure out how to get rid of the extra waste water. In the end it would mean too much manual involvement, so for now it's just pure water with the RO Right :)
 
20 ppm nitrates would be close to ideal for rays. 40 ppm would by no means be dangerous levels. Even with 2 50% wcs a week i still run between 20-40 ppm nitrates after a water change and my ray and fish show no ill effects
 
That takes a lot of stress off my mind. This tank has taken so much planning, that every little thing I can not worry about is like having the a huge weight removed.
 
johno27;5087594; said:
20 ppm nitrates would be close to ideal for rays. 40 ppm would by no means be dangerous levels. Even with 2 50% wcs a week i still run between 20-40 ppm nitrates after a water change and my ray and fish show no ill effects
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But an algae filter can definitely help with nitrate as well as many other things. I run them on all my tanks and when they are built and setup property they are very useful. If built and maintained properly there is not really any rebound time after cleaning an algae filter because you only clean half of it and the other half is still doing it's job. You basically are only using half the filter at any given time and the other half is regrowing. The regrowth is also were allot of stuff starts to get sucked out of the water. So you need to build one that is antiquate for your situation. I think this is were allot of people that try them don't have very dramatic results, because it was not built/setup properly or maintained properly. If you would like to know more about algae filters there is quite a bit of info around and I would be happy to give you any advice I can provide, just PM me.
 
You can cut your R/O water back with regular tap water in your mixing tub, 50-50 or some proportion that makes sense, depending on how hard your tap water is. Then you will need less R/O and not need to add any buffers. win-win.
 
Algae scrubber with r/o it will be best of both.
 
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