root tabs, lightly planted tank
- Thread starter p0tluck
- Start date
You mention doing 2, ~25% WCs per week. Each time you do that, you're only dropping your nitrates by 25%, so that would take the tank down to ~45ppm nitrates. If your nitrate creep is 5ppm per day, you're back up to 60ppm in 3 days, so another ~25% WC takes it back down to 45ppm. Your nitrate creeps up daily due to the food we feed our fish and the fishes waste and respiration. Less fish, light feeding = a lower nitrate creep.
It all boils down to the fact that we control nitrates by doing water changes. You can control it with a heavily planted tank and extremely low bio load, but IMO, that takes more work/measurement that just doing WCs.
no i do 25% water 1/3 gravel, nitrates are food waste, fish waste etc etc, when i gravel vac i do 1/3 each time twice a week which is roughly 66 % of my substrate weekly, nitrates are in the substrate/filter not the actual water right? , theres no logical reason why my nitrates are still 60 i have been doing things for 2 years to get it down and theres nothing that has worked i have even done 3 PWC a week even a 4th which actually killed off some fish cause i was over cleaning and killed my bio bed cause i was also doing the filters every week as well, i feed small 2 x a day for 4 days which i dont like doing so i am actually thinking of going back up to 5, you rremove nitrates by gravel vaccing and cleaning filters and if you have decor where food can get trapped in it or am i totally confused?
sorry i should be more specific, as far as the water changes i do 2 per week at 25% water 33% gravel each time (meaning i vac the 33% very good then skim over the rest of the top of the gravel lightly until i drain about 25-30% of the water out) i do this twice a week, i recondition the water i ad back to the tank with prime, so every week i am vaccing 66% of my bio bed roughly and 50 - 60% water. i am totally lost on what you are talking about as 66% gravel 60% water per week shouldnt keep me at 60 ppm. maybe i have bad bottles of test solution
my stock is this
6 lemon tetras
2 buenos aires tetras ( about to rehome as they are aggressive)
1 turquoise rainbow ( my other 4 dies a year ago when ii was over cleaning)
3 phantom tetras
1 calico BN
2 glo light danios ( the other 3 died the same time my rainbows did)
so 15 not the original number i thought)
my stock is this
6 lemon tetras
2 buenos aires tetras ( about to rehome as they are aggressive)
1 turquoise rainbow ( my other 4 dies a year ago when ii was over cleaning)
3 phantom tetras
1 calico BN
2 glo light danios ( the other 3 died the same time my rainbows did)
so 15 not the original number i thought)
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