Fertilizers and Nitrate Readings

T

Tien23

AC Members
Aug 18, 2011
13
0
1
Las Vegas, NV
I am experienced in the aquarium hobby but am new to planted tanks. I have a Fluval Ebi 8 gallon shrimp tank that I have heavily planted. I occasionally dose Flourish, Iron, Phosphorus, Potassium, and Excel. I want to maintain decent plants without insane levels of growth. So far I have been successful. I also keep shrimp but I am worried about my Nitrate readings. I always seem to have high nitrates. I have less than 10 shrimp and I feed them only once every 2 or 3 days and very little at that since they eat the algae and plant matter in the tank as well. I have been doing water changes because my nitrates have been so high but my goal is to have the plants reduce nitrate levels. My nitrate readings range from 40 to 80 ppm!!! My tap water has less than 5 ppm. Could my fertilizers be affecting the test kit?
 
What kind of plants are you growing? Typically only stem plants will take fertilzers out of the water. And even then they will only do so much, water changes will be more effective. If your levels are really that high you should work on doing more maintenance. I doubt there is any plant that can suck out 40-80ppm. If your doing 10% water changes every week then do 25% if doing 25% then do 50% whatever you are doing now doesn't seem to be enough.
 
I have one Anubias Barteri Var. Nana which I now hear may be toxic if I trim the leaves in the water. I have probably 30 percent of the tank covered in Creeping Charlie (Micromeria Brownei). Also have 2 large Wisteria bunches, a Java moss ball, tons of duckweed, 3 bannana plants (Nymphoides aquatica) and Micro Sword (lilaeopsis brasiliensis) covering the front foreground of my tank.

I am using standard API test kits. I as still perplexed as this seems to be very high nitrate readings considering the bio load and limited feeding. I have used a second nitrate test kit to verify the results from the first.
 
And you said this is a shrimp tank? Maybe to much food. Because yes if you have shrimp they give off a very low amount of waste. And you have some plants that should be taking in the nutrients.

Where did you hear that Anubius is toxic? I have had anubius with all my fish and never had any problems. My 55 has 4 of them which I trim and split all the time, I have amano shrimp filter shrimp and fish and haven't had a death in a very long time probably at least a year.
 
I'll cut back even more on the food and see what happens. As far as the Anubais is concerned I googled them and found that they can release some sort of acid that is toxic when you trim them. There isn't much info on them but I am glad to hear they work out fine for you. So basically, no one here thinks there ferts could be throwing the nitrate readings off?
 
Nitrates usually get dosed via KNO3 aka Potassium Nitrate. Flourish is just trace, excel is liquid CO2, Iron and Phosphorus would not contain any Nitrates. I looked up what Flourish potassium is and it's potassium sulfate so no it would not be in that either. Flourish even specifically says it has no nitrates. So no they shouldn't be in anything you are dosing. That is why I mentioned food, uneaten food decays kind of like fish poop. So the bacteria breaks it down Ammonia-Nitrite-then spits out Nitrates. So to much food will cause your nitrates to rise.
 
what's the substrate?
any decaying plant matter?
feeding any whole foods?

EDIT: doing any substrate fertilization?
 
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