whats going on???

beeguiles

beeguiles

they call me fish geek ;p
I did a 45% water change yesterday bc my nitrates were still testing at 20ppm. I tested my water today and they read at 10ppm.. shouldn't they be at zero after such a large water change? I have four small fish, I don't overfeed, I have a protein skimmer. I keep up with my water changes. Nothing has died.. idk what's going on. I'm starting to think its my test kit giving me false readings. My nitrates should be at zero. I did two 25% water changes last week. I did a 45% water change yesterday. There is no way the nitrates.can creep up that fast is there? It's a 29g reef tank with lots of inverts. The only illness in my tank is my jawfish with ich. He is struggling to pull through but he seems to be recovering slowly. I'm stumped....my lfs says my nitrates are zero but they don't shake the bottles before they put the drops in so I don't think they are accurate. What do you guys think? Am I wasting my time and salt by doing all these water changes? What could be causing nitrate levels? I do use tap water but I tested my plain tap water and it tested at zero.
 
Have you tested your freshly made saltwater?

Those nitrate tests dont work in freshwater so you cant really test your tap with them.
 
Oh your are right. I forgot about that. I still think it would be zero though. The salt wouldn't cause it would it? I use the instant ocean reef crystals.
 
There is no way to know until you test the new water. And nitrates are a very common tap water contaminate because of run off from farm land.

Also, you can ask wontonflip about this, but she constantly had nitrate problems when she was using tap even though it test zero in her water and newly made salt. Once she switched, end of nitrate issue.

I would really suggest that you change to RO/DI, not living with the impurities found in tap is going to be a benefit to all your critters, especially your sick jawfish.
 
I was looking into switching but I decided not to bc I got a booklet from my town telling me exactly what's in our water and what the percentage is and all that and it was very clean to my surprise. I haven't had any issues with nitrates until just recently.
 
I still think you would be better off with RO/DI water, you might think those values are "clean" but when compared to their optimal value, that is really high. Plus those values are average, you have no idea what they are running on the day you make your water or how long ago all that stuff was calculated. This could have changed quite a bit since then.
 
beeguiles said:
I was looking into switching but I decided not to bc I got a booklet from my town telling me exactly what's in our water and what the percentage is and all that and it was very clean to my surprise. I haven't had any issues with nitrates until just recently.
Click to expand...


well see your town/city will tell you how "clean" their water is wich is fine untill you think about it they say how clean it is when THEY filter it but what about when it goes thrue the pipes how old are those pipes? what about your house/apt pipes how clean are those? just something you may wanna think about
 
+1 jcetg87, even if your city water is pretty good chances are it passes through copper pipes somewhere along the lines to your tank. Do you have a TDS meter? I would test your tap to see exactly what's going into your tank.
 
Hmmm..idk they just sent it to me in the mail a few months ago. And my house pipes are brand new bc we just built the house. I know someone who lives near me that doesn't use ro/di water and doesn't have any issues with their tank..
 
beeguiles said:
I did a 45% water change yesterday bc my nitrates were still testing at 20ppm. I tested my water today and they read at 10ppm.. shouldn't they be at zero after such a large water change?.
Click to expand...


I think technically no they should read 10. Doing the math if you take 50% of 20 then you should end up with 10 ppm nitrate reading.
 
I thought that if you have 20ppm and you do a 20% water Change or more then you end up at zero. You change the percentage of what the nitrates are reading. Idk if that makes any sense.
 
Aquaworld Aquarium - Water Changes

Okay this is the site I read about water changes. I re read the quantifying water changes sections and it makes sense to me now I think. So if I am 10 now and I do a 50% water change again I will be at 5? And so forth? I'm a little confused still I guess. Lol I feel dumb
 
Ya the math is kinda weird on it.
When you start with 20 and want to get it down to 5 you'd either have to do a 75% water change, or two 50% water changes.
 
I wouldn't do too many large water changes, if the parameters (pH, temp, etc) don't match up perfectly it could adversely affect some of the creatures in your tank. I would just do 10% changes once maybe twice a week till you got them to 0. Nitrates at 10 are nowhere near dangerous to the things in our tanks so I wouldn't take any drastic measures unless they start going up really high.
 

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