water issues

[David James]

Did a water 25% water change yesterday notice within testing the water I found my Nitrate is at 160ppm, ammonia is 0 ppm, phoshate is 0.5 ppm nitrite is 0 ppm and carbonate is 107.4 ppm. Now I only have fish only in the tank and they are 6 small damsels house in a 90 gal bow font. How can i fix that nitrate and phosphate I have to bring them down.

 

[Aquarian]

What are you testing with? 160 ppm I'm thinking you should have some stressed out fish if not floaters.
Are you having algae issues?

 

[kbuser92]

I'm going to guess that the test was either read wrong, performed wrong, bad test or just a bad reading and should be redone. If it reads the same again, I would say have it tested with a different kit. Are you using RO/DI?

 

[Greenman]

160?? Everything would most likely be dead. That's crazy high

 

[puzzles]

i have notices that different test kits for different company's, give different results and after a year they get faulty

 

[ccCapt]

I am assuming the tank water is where you got the high nitrate reading. Did you test your new water?
The easiest way to drop nitrates is water changes...and lots of them. It's all a matter of math to determine how long it will take to drop it.
If you do a 20% water change (and this is of course assuming your new water has 0 nitrate) and the current level is 160ppm, the reading after the water change will only drop 32ppm down to 128ppm. Another 20% change will drop it to ~103ppm, etc, etc.

Again, I am assuming that you had the fish in the tank for a while. There have been studies done where fish can tolerate up to 300ppm nitrate before they start to die off...if the level gradually rose over time. That's not to say you shouldn't be trying to lower it, it's just to let you know what they can handle.