oscar nitrate production

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ok lets try this a different way, ehh ehh you have a 10-11 inch midas in a 75g dont you? im guessing you being a seasoned mfker do your weekly water changes religiously right? if so how much do you change and whats your tap nitrate? can you give us and end of week maximum nitrate level?
 
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i know yuki, its odd that the largest fish website in the world (i think?) doesnt have a rough amount of nitrate a 12 inch cichlid will create in a 100g of water lol! aqua adviser says 25% a week will suffice!?
 
When I worked in a lab, I would test tank water every other day or so, until I reached a point where I found that, every other day 20%-30% water changes would produce a ball park nitrate level of between 2-5ppm (my intended goal).
This was back in the early 2000s. By the mid 2000s I was testing twice per month after reaching my goal, by doing the amount of water changes needed to it, and just to make sure things were stable with that regime.
I also tested for ammonia because my tap water is treated with chloramine, and I could test on the same spectrophotometer.
Below a few pages from my log book with the type tests done
By the way the 150 gal tank in the 1st page, held a mated pair of haitiensus, male 12"-14", female 10+"

 
thats brilliant, so bassically 1x average 12 inch cichlid per 100g, tap water nitrate at what 0ppm??

so 25% change will level out at 3.5x your nitrates you produce in 2x days, need to know how much you nitrates settled above tap water?

pretty hard to read but seems to say your nitrates were still within 3ppm of zero?

we know multiple smaller changes are not as good as larger less often due to dilution, wonder how your system works...?
 
For me stability is the key.
If one large change per week brings nitrate down to 0, but in the mean time, pH falls from say 7.2, to 5.5 between water changes, that is to me, not stability.
A drop in pH and/or alkalinity, usually adds up to mean (to me)a build up of excess fish urine.
And though many fish can handle pH drop, because I was working with a breeding pair of haitiensus, I was very concerned with parameter stability.
You may notice in my log the 1st test I would do, was to measure alkalinity, which is the ability of water to buffer acids, and a very important stability barometer.
I found by doing more (every other day), albeit smaller water changes (20% to 30%), my tank alkalinity remained more stable, as did pH.
 
Ah I see, im not quite up to speed on the effects of ph and the variables it can cause, something I may look into... Always amazes me how aquanero can tell people what meds with work at particular temps and hardness. You give some great info on here dude and your easy to speak to, some people can be quite arrogant to people learning, even learning now 10yrs into the hobbie!-)
 
So as an estimate <0.5 ppm per day per fish if we go at roughly the 3.5x produced nitrates every two days....?

If a messy oscar im 100g creates say 1ppm per day then, thats 7ppm per week. If your starting nitrate nitrate/tapwater is 5ppm it would be:
25% water change = SETTLED nitrate of 29ppm
50% = 19ppm
75% = 14ppm

Sound right?
 
For us UK mfkers with tap water of 40ppm doing weekly wc off....

25% = 64ppm
50% = 54ppm
75% = 49ppm
 
And for all those UK old school peeps who still believe 1 wc per 30 day month is OK...

20% = 145ppm
50% = 100ppm
75% = 80ppm

And thats just with a correctly stocked 100g...
 
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