It's been up for three weeks, and all of my plants are growing like mad, I'm about ready to cut them in half for the second time.
what is a good nitrate level
- Thread starter bigmatt76
- Start date
Yeah, what happened to my nitrites, if they're supposed to last 2-3 weeks, I had 1 iffy day, and my nitrates have been at 20 to 40 ppm for 2 weeks! 
Nitrites are converted to nitrates, nitrates are removed in the water changes. You did a fishy cycle, or fishless? Any help from other filter media? If you had used filter squeezinz from another tank, it may already be established, and the process is going how its supposed to.
I did a fishy cycle and used some gravel and ornaments from an established tank. Those only help with the ammonia not nitrites or nitrates don't they?
The amonia is the 1st step, it is broken down to nitrites. Nitrites are turned to nitrates. Both are broken down by bacteria. It may be that you had enough bacteria to complete the cycle in a few days-a week. Nitrates will be removed in your water changes. Have you tried to read the "cycle" sticky? I can't get the link to work, and the whole thing is a mess. Someone should do an article on it so ther isn't all the misinfo and clutter to it. The fact that you are seeing nitrates means your amonia has been broken down to nitrites, and your nitrites into nitrates.... wohooooooo!
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I'll be honest, the test kit I have for nitrates say that it is a debatable issue among fish keepers and high/low levels don't mean much... I don't test for them ever, but I also have established tank that I take good care of and the ph, etc. never varies... But what about the debate? Interested in the response!
High levels of nitrates can themselves be an issue, but fish vary a lot in their resistance to nitrate toxicity. Immune response and fertility are affected first, but still with high species-to-species variability. Nitrate is used not just for itself, but as an indicator of general pollution levels of all the hundreds of things that we do not test for - organics, including hormones, cyclic componds, inorganic mineral buildup, etc. The other pollutants will not exactly match nitrate build-up, but they should be proportional to it, so we use nitrate concentration as a estimate of general pollution in the tank water and as a check that out water changes are doing what we want them to do - which is to keep our tank water near our tap water or source water parameters.
If the tanks are heavily planted, nitrate loses its value as an indicator, as it will read lower than it would in a fish-only tank without plants since the plants use nitrate as a nitrogen source.
The EPA sets below 44 ppm nitrate as safe for drinking water. It is not unreasonable to want tank nitrate levels below that. At or below half of that level is better still - but that does still apply best to non-planted tanks.
HTH
If the tanks are heavily planted, nitrate loses its value as an indicator, as it will read lower than it would in a fish-only tank without plants since the plants use nitrate as a nitrogen source.
The EPA sets below 44 ppm nitrate as safe for drinking water. It is not unreasonable to want tank nitrate levels below that. At or below half of that level is better still - but that does still apply best to non-planted tanks.
HTH
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