so i am taking out 25-30 % twice a week , when you say 25-30 % you mean water right because from everything i read your gravel holds everything and your filter not the actual water, this is where i think some things have to be explained better, i do remove 25-30% water twice a week so 50-60% weekly, but no one talks about how much gravel vacuuming should be done, i do 66% weekly to leave the other 33% alone so i dont crash my bio bed. some people never vacuum their gravel and only do straight water change i dont get it, 25-30% does that include vacuuming the gravel and if so how much gravel? am i doing to much gravel at 66% weekly?
tto much water at 50-60% weekly?
p0tluck, I think you're confusing bacteria & nitrate. Beneficial bacteria lives on all surfaces-- on filter media & décor. You don't harm it by vacuuming or water changes. Nitrate is in the water column from dissolved fish waste, & as Bob said, from decomposing debris like fish food & dead leaves.
Do you find areas that collect a lot of waste? You could try rearranging your décor so that doesn't happen so much or at least concentrate vacuuming those areas. Do larger volume WCs each time to get to a healthier nitrate level. How many root tabs do you have? 1 per large sword is plenty & should last 3 months or more.
Then either your doing very small WCs or your nitrate test is old. Sometimes the colors are hard to differentiate, my husband sees some colors differently than I do, especially at the "high end" of some. If your eyes & WCs are "good" then it's time for a new test reagent. What you are saying is scientifically impossible...if based on good scientific method & good tests. Do you closely follow the directions on the pkg?...What brand of "test" are you using? Strips are not very accurate & even harder to see color differences. Ain't no "magic" about it.the thing is it never drops below 60 is what im saying i can test it 2 hours after i do my PWC and its still 60ppm .. thats what im getting at, at NO time ever if my nitrates lower than 60 even after a water change and 100% substrate vac. another thing that is weird is i never have algae EVER , i have to feed my BN blanched veggies and algae tabs cause there no algae in my tank anywhere.
API master liquid test kitThen either your doing very small WCs or your nitrate test is old. Sometimes the colors are hard to differentiate, my husband sees some colors differently than I do, especially at the "high end" of some. If your eyes & WCs are "good" then it's time for a new test reagent. What you are saying is scientifically impossible...if based on good scientific method & good tests. Do you closely follow the directions on the pkg?...What brand of "test" are you using? Strips are not very accurate & even harder to see color differences. Ain't no "magic" about it.
So what is wrong with your test kit (what's the date code?), testing or method? I'm not trying to pick a fight but what you're saying isn't possible unless you have quite a lot of nitrate in your tap water, more than the 5%? you've said is there...or you're not changing as much water as it seems to you. Yeah, buckets are heavy, it seems like I'm changing more than I actually am at times...unless my husband is doing the lifting, lol.API master liquid test kit
I do the test as directed about shake my arm off doing the nitrate test (lol)
i drain 16-18 gallons off water each time approx 30-32% PWC twice a week ,
i too have trouble reading the very close shades of reds but other people in the house are also saying im inbetween 40-80 i am going to go down and do a test right after i type this as i just did my PWC yesterday night i think i might video it and upload it to youtube and post it here so you all can see im not imagining things, maybe you all can see what i am doing wrong if anything, i will have to pause it for the 5 min wait period and unpause after the 5 min, wait maybe i can just do the ff option so it isnt a 10 min video i'll see what i can do
my other thread was about root tabs and ferts where i mentioned in that thread that i do have high nitrates not thinking that it would create a new thread inside of the one i started about root tabs and ferts, i have a bucket that is marked with gallons so i know how much water i remove and water i put back in i did do a video but my video editing software keeps crashing when i try to render it.So what is wrong with your test kit (what's the date code?), testing or method? I'm not trying to pick a fight but what you're saying isn't possible unless you have quite a lot of nitrate in your tap water, more than the 5%? you've said is there...or you're not changing as much water as it seems to you. Yeah, buckets are heavy, it seems like I'm changing more than I actually am at times...unless my husband is doing the lifting, lol.
If you can't tell the difference in colors for the API test, try adding half the amt of drops...or twice the amt of water...so if it reads 40 that way, it's really 80ppm, for example.
Could be you're overfeeding too...do you feed between WC & testing?
Really, we're trying to help you.
Maybe a moderator could put this in a new thread, we seem to have gone way off the OP's topic & p0tluck has a similar thread going I think, somewhere. I know I've lost the OP's idea, sorry again tackful.