Which add make filters better clean water

[Younglin]

Im sure that driftwood make the water yellow and nitrate up. I have add new and more carbon. hope that help a lots.

Driftwood would cause your water to turn yellow due to leaching tannin but it would not affect your nitrates. Also carbon is pretty much useless. It does... well nothing.

 

[Cookie*]

The only practical way to remove nitrates is through water changes. Some people find ways to run their water through anaerobic conditions to remove nitrates, but it's fairly complicated, and if done wrong can result in sulfur compounds.

You could also add lots of plants, which will take nitrate if they have to, although they prefer ammonia, so what'll probably happen is that they'll take in all the ammonia and kill off your beneficial bacteria, which won't be a problem if and only if you can keep the plants alive and thriving. Otherwise your tank will recycle.

Don't mess around with the pH too much. Except for the most delicate of fish, pH is fine even if it's not the same as what's in the wild, so long as it's stable. For example, it's better to have a South American fish, which is normally found in acidic waters, in hard, stable water, than in soft water which is tampered with chemically and which can have pH swings at any given moment.

I have a SA cichlid that comes from softer waters and was looking to soften the water myself as I also had hard water. After much research, I decided to follow the above advice and it has been working out fine with my fish. Also once lowering hardness and then ph, you can have quick shifts in ph which can kill the fish. You are best to keep the water hard and the fish will adapt to it. If you are looking to soften to water for breeding purposes, that is another story. I am not at all sure about safe rates at which to even soften the water or lower the ph.

 

[fishheadPH]

that bit about not being able to filter out nitrates just hit me in the stomach. I had always hoped to get it so I didn't need to change the water every week. That ends up being a lot of waisted water at the end of the yr

 

[Younglin]

that bit about not being able to filter out nitrates just hit me in the stomach. I had always hoped to get it so I didn't need to change the water every week. That ends up being a lot of waisted water at the end of the yr

You can boil the water until it evaporates and use a cone above the pot to catch and condense the water vapor. The water will be very soft and neutral and 0 nitrates. I know a guy who does this and has only had to add water to his tank once in two years. He just recycles the water over and over and his water parameters are always 0.

 

[fishtex]

A drip system involve a ro-di unit or similar fed directly to your tank at a metered rate. It would add water to tank constantly and you need a drain off once it reaches the appropriate level. Its just a constant mostly effort-less water changer. You can change flow rate to change little or more water at any given time. search through the diy threads for more info. sorry if that is hard to understand, i'm currently building my first one to reduce maintenence on my new 150

 

[Fanlie]

Thank for all the comments. im feeling a better now that i understand tannins from driftwood make water yellow.

In morning have water kits test. All is fine.

I wonder how long still remove tannins of the driftwood? month and month ... or again 25% water change each week and change carbon 3/4 week.