Seachem safe? 0ppm nitrates???

[esoxlucius]

duanes , TwoTankAmin , Rocksor .

I've tagged you guys in this one because I need you to collectively explain to me the folly, or genius, behind my thinking.

We know that seachem prime, and safe, render ammonia, nitrite and nitrate harmless to our fish for up to 48 hours. In a well maintained established tank the ammonia and nitrite would rarely be a problem, but the nitrate is obviously ongoing.

For those who are extremely paranoid regarding even low levels of nitrate, is there a case for continually dosing tiny levels of seachem safe into your tank every 48 hours to ensure that your tanks stock never comes into contact with nitrate?

You might say well that's why we do water changes, which is true. But even after a water change i wager that the vast majority of us are still around the 5ppm area, heavily stocked tanks possibly more. Regular dosing of seachem safe, along with regular water changes would mean, theoretically, that nitrate levels are 0ppm all the time!

From a cost perspective you'd have to use safe. Prime, long term, would be cost prohibitive. You'd also possibly need to have good agitation in your tank to counter the potential oxygen depletion that safe can cause.

Just for the record this is something I'd never do. I'm not that paranoid about my nitrate. But theoretically could it work?

 

[Rocksor]

Well, from Seachem (last I checked) they were using anecdotal information from users that Prime and Safe protected fish from nitrate. I don’t quite know how it would do that. There was one time when I purposely overdosed a 1 gallon bucket with 20ppm nitrates, snd didn’t get a nitrate reading 24 hours later from the bucket. But the amount of Safe I used was way over 5x 1 teaspoon per 200 gallons.

I understand how ammonia and nitrite are rendered harmless, but not nitrate

 

[duanes]

I have never used Safe to lower to lower nitrate, so I have no experience or personal info in that regard,
Since I use nitrate as an indicator chemical for water changes, not only simply to reduce nitrate in itself but I use it as an indicator, as a guide to help determine what other deleterious chemicals, pheromones, or hormones are in the tank water. Those that we have no available way to test for, so using a chemical for temporary reduction does not fit into my approach.