High NitrAtes with a heavily planted tank??

wow... insulting.

james... i could only speculate. i tossed around the idea that your power outage may have something to do with it, but from what i understand you only had losses in one tank?
unhealthy plants... but that doesn't make sense as your plants always look healthy to me.
shading/older lights giving way to stunted growth and thus re-releasing previously consumed nutrients? maybe they're getting a bit overgrown?
maybe your stock has just reached that point? i assume all those oto babies are going into planted tanks?

but, yeah... all speculation...
 
dundadundun said:
wow... insulting.
Click to expand...

Me?? I hope not. If so, I sure wasn't meaning anything as an insult towards anyone. My apologies if so.

Yep, everything nice and healthy in the tanks. Nice big jungles and jungle "want-to-be's". ;)

The Oto babes do go into a holding tank when they reach a certain age.
 
no, no, no... you're good as always, james! always been a nice guy and a humble fellow. admirable, actually!

have you been keeping the stock at steady numbers/size in these tanks? curious...
 
Thanks.

As for the stocking...for the most part...yes. The exception being that the numbers in the holding tank decline as I sell more Otos. Same with the shrimp as their breeding continue. You get new babes...you rehome others. But nothing in terms of adding additional stock. The original fauna stays as is and that part won't change in these particular tanks. ;)
 
Well, obviously different plants take up nitrates differently. Java fern for all it's low light slowish growth seems to really suck up nitrates fast for me (not that I test often), crypts much less with a similar "leaf mass". Root feeders vs water column? Just casual observation, there are many differences in my tanks.

other ideas: more dead leaves? more rescaping stirring up "stuff"?

...but I really do think it's your small water changes not keeping up with what's going in. This winter I cut back just a bit with all the snow shovelling from say 40-50% to 30-35% weekly. It didn't take long for my nitrates in 1 tank to go from 20 to between 40 & 80. I was shocked! My filter maintenance had also gone a little longer than before. 1 other tank was up to ~30 but other were within their "normal" range.
 
James0816 said:
Folks, please. My question is in absolutley no way, 1000%, related to breeding or health of the flora or fauna of the tanks. Period. I'm not sure where the confusion is coming from. The title specifically states the question.

The question is merely, and I state again just to clarify, why nitrAtes would be higher in a heavily planted tank as opposed to that of tanks with a lesser amount of plants. That is all I'm inquiring about. I wasn't looking for advice on breeding. I wasn't looking for advice on maintenance or fert dosing schedules. Heck .... I'm not even looking for advice in general.

Just thought that someone might have some thoughts as to why this would occur on different tanks that get the same lighting, the same fert dosing, the same maintenance. The only thing that is different would be the type of fauna (i.e shrimp and oto species), substrate (in some cases) and plants (species and quantity). The tanks with the highest density of plants are the tanks with the highest NO3. Not the tanks with the least amount of plants. In my mind, that is completely backwards but I'm sure there is a perfectly good and logical explaination for it.
Click to expand...

Did you calibrate the test kit?
I have several tanks with different readings.
We assume the light is the same, but is it?
eg, you measured NO3, but what about light? PAR meter etc?
CO2? This one is pretty tough to get confident measure.

Light and CO2 will dramatically affect nutrient uptake, even is the differences are small.
Some plants are more aggressive in uptake/CO2 and ability to photosynthesize at lower light.
Unless you can confirm the light/CO2, it is very difficult to make much conclusion or assume that the tanks are equal.
You can measure the light with a meter, and then do good size water changes and dose with ferts after.........and get pretty close.
But CO2 is still hard to pin down.
 
Mind, going back to the OP, it strikes me that if you're dosing nitrate, and nitrate is higher than you want it to be, then, for the plants you have, the lighting and CO2 you have, and the water changes you're doing, you're dosing too much nitrate.
 
Understand what you're saying there. However, the dosing amounts haven't changed in very long time. This just occured recently.
 
Are there more old plants with some dying leaves than there used to be? Are the lighting tubes getting old, in which case photosynthesis might be slowing and therefore the nitrogen demand less? Has the surrounding environment changed so that less ambient light is hitting the tank? Has the fish load increased as fish grow?
 
Are there more old plants with some dying leaves than there used to be? - No old decaying material. Anytime I find leaves dying, they are removed.

Are the lighting tubes getting old, in which case photosynthesis might be slowing and therefore the nitrogen demand less? - Oldest tube I have is just about a year old on one tank. All other tubes are < 6 months.

Has the surrounding environment changed so that less ambient light is hitting the tank? - No changes in the environment

Has the fish load increased as fish grow? - No added load of late. Some small bumps in shrimp population but nothing by way of fishy.

I just did 20% water changes in all tanks this weekend using sping water. Will test today and see where we stand. I haven't dosed any ferts during this period as well. Some trimming as well. I'm sure my plants are not happy with me at the moment.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom