Do I have magic water?

Do I have magic water?

Yes, your water is magic...

Seriously, IMO..You are doing a good job at feeding the right amount of food to your fish, keeping your tanks clean, and keeping them stocked appropriately for the amount of space you have. Less wasted food and not overfeeding leads to less decaying food on the bottom and less fish waste. You have maintained your tanks from the get go, not allowing wastes to accumulate in them. Appropriate stocking and management of amount of food, etc., goes a long ways towards keeping nitrates low, even with skipping water changes and gravel vacs occasionally.

BTW, are all of your tanks planted?..This would be the explanation if the above is not correct..;)
 
Another major factor lies in total organic content. Assuming good bio-filtration, and good content of other Micro-fauna, any waste in the tank will be processed down and the end result is a climb in nitrates. Obviously most folks are aware of that, but I have found that tanks which are vaccumed exceptionally well Will remain far more stable than those which are not. For instance, if you have a tank That has no significant organic levels, and you skip feeding for a week, you'll see little rise in nitrates. on the flip side if you have a good amount of mulm (such as is desired in many plant tanks). You could remove the Fish, stop feeding and you'll still see a climb in nitrates for several days. It all boils down to Total organic waste levels, and the fact that you can skip partials without seeing much rise in Nitrates indicates a really clean tank in the physical sense as well as water quality wise.

Back before the days when I started using RFUG, I was a vaccum phanatic. It always borhered me that My Oscar tanks would cloud up a lot when I vaccumed. For that reason I would often keep doing Water changes and vaccuming until the nasty stuff was all but gone. My nitrates never climbed in those tanks, and we are talking about 55g's with juvenile Oscars and really way too many other fish.

Dave
 
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