Low nitrates, what to do?

fballguy

fballguy

yum
Feb 27, 2006
1,561
0
0
38
Everett, WA
www.freshwaterfanatics.com
My plants are using too many nitrates. Before adding live plants it was a struggle to keep my nitrates below 20 because my tap water has 15 ppm nitrates. Well now with live plants my nitrates drop to 5 ppm in a day. I don't want to change water every day to add nitrates so what can I get to add nitrates to the water.
 
If you had 20ppm, then aren't the plants consuming 15ppm, leaving 5ppm left over? In other words they are not depleting all of it, so why add extra? Maybe you have a perfect balence.
I'm curious about the answer to this as well.
 
my understanding is that when nitrates get to low algae may overtake an aquarium. apparently some algae can pull nitrogen from the air.

I think there are plant fertilizers thay will add nitrates back into the tank.
 
Hi

Your nitrates can be at 5pmm and plants still be ok as long as your nitrates don't bottom out and hit 0ppm that's where the problems start. For a planted tank ieadl nitrates should be 10-20ppm. If they do bottom out you will have to add nitrates.

i need to know what is your watts per gallon. Take the total watt of your light/s and and then divied your tanks size in gallons by it.

Ex 20 watts- 29 gallons = .68 wpg

Then we will go from there. You should not have to do a water change to get you nitrates up you need to does kno3 (nitrates) if that is the case.
 
I hope I am not hijacking...

I am consistantly getting 0 nitrates in my moderately planted and fish stocked 55 with 2 watts/gal. I feed my fish every day and Excel every other day. 20% water changes every week.

Should I be adding nitrates?
 
will5 said:
Your nitrates can be at 5pmm and plants still be ok as long as your nitrates don't bottom out and hit 0ppm that's where the problems start. For a planted tank ieadl nitrates should be 10-20ppm. If they do bottom out you will have to add nitrates.

i need to know what is your watts per gallon. Take the total watt of your light/s and and then divied your tanks size in gallons by it.

Ex 20 watts- 29 gallons = .68 wpg

Then we will go from there. You should not have to do a water change to get you nitrates up you need to does kno3 (nitrates) if that is the case.
Click to expand...

My WPG is 2. I realize I should not have to do a water change to raise nitrates that is why I asked this question. My tap nitrate is 15 so when I change water I get around 7-8 ppm. Nitrates don't level out at 5, they drop to 5 in a day, from there they bottom out so I am changing water every other day right now to keep nitrates up. My question was what do I need to add to my water in order to get my nitrates up?
 
I use Seachem's Flourish Nitrogen to raise my nitrate level. It is something you could add daily. I learned the hard way with a cyano/blue-green algae outbreak that nitrates in a planted tank shouldn't be allowed to hit 0 for very long. Greg Watson dry ferts would be a cheaper option as well if you have a larger tank. If your plants are using up the nitrate that fast, they probably need the other big macro and micro nutrients as well.
 
Last edited:
umm fish might be in order... I don't know couldn't the tank handle more fish, over stock if you will, to produce more "fertilizer" for the tank?:duh:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom