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I have a little problem keeping my nitrates down in my 36 gallon goldfish tank, housing two - 3.5 inch fancy goldfish. I do 30% changes weekly, sometimes twice weekly and am lucky to get to 40ppm. Tank is unplanted and I am likely to add plants back in within the next month or two. so that should help.

One of the goldfish develops redness (varicose vein-like) in his tail fin when nitrates are high, so I have good reason to want to get them lower. I'd like to stay below 20ppm.

I can't move these guys into a larger tank until I move which may be 6 months to a year. Not wanting to do daily or every other day water changes, I've decided to try a nitrate absorbing pad. I was able to find:

NitraZorb.

Has anyone dealt with it? It says it lasts from 3-6 months before it needs to be recharged in a salt solution. However, I found something old on the web where someone had to recharge it weekly.

What's your experience with it, if you've tried it?

Incidentally, if anyone is interested, I have added the larger pouch (for up to 55gal) into the 36 gallon tank. It claims to be able to lower Nitrates 16ppm in 24-48 hours. I'll post results here.

As of this post, after a water change and before the NitraZorb was added, the Nitrates were 20ppm.

I'll post a nitrate reading tomorrow at this time.

Diane

Last edited by Cory_Di at 01-Feb-2005 20:40

Okay, that is a very confusing product. I have used a product with the same name by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals, and I thought this one might be a different one, but then they say that this Rena product is actually manufactured by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals. Anyway, after reading the text, I can confirm it is the same product, only packed differently.

To the point. Yes, I've used this product. No, I don't use it anymore. I didn't see any change in my nitrate levels when using this product.

As my water comes out of the tap with 20ppm nitrate, I decided to experiment with that product and put it in the filter to run in a bucket with 3 - 4 gallons of water. Nada.

As for recharging, you have to recharge it every 5 days until you reach your desired nitrate levels, and then recharge it every two weeks. The one in your link says that you should replace it every 1 - 3 months. The one I had said that you should replace it after the resins have changed their colour.

Also, you must note that you can't use salt in your tank if you have that pouch. Once you add salt, the nitrates that it has absorbed will be released into the water.

The only method that worked for me in lowering nitrate levels are frequent water changes (at least twice a week, more often if I can be bothered) with R/O water.

Saying that, I hope your experiment works better than mine. I'm interested in the results.

Well, its been 12 hours and nitrate have gone from 20ppm to 10ppm. . I'm going to check in another 11-12 hours and again tomorrow morning.

I think it helped to get my nitrates down to 20ppm before putting it in. I'll check the bag in a few days to see how the color is. In fact, if I get down to 0, I may recharge it so it doesn't have any residual in there.

I do have a small amount of salt left, but not much as I've done so many water changes, but thanks for that head's up. I would not have thought of that.

How in sam hill do they use it for SW? I thought the salt concentration had to be quite high to recharge it.



Last edited by Cory_Di at 02-Feb-2005 11:00

Great news! I don't know why it didn't work for me, and it's not like you need to be a rocket scientist... But nada. And you can't blame me either, my tank is way understocked. Well, as long as it works for you!

Time will tell. I remembered that I also dosed the tank with Prime when I did the water change last night and approximated the amount that went in. Prime can reduce nitrates. So, if they are lower than 10ppm in the next day or two, we can safely assume it is the pad.

I still plan on doing water changes weekly - probably 40%.

Ok - after 22 hours, I would estimate the reading to be about 8ppm. It wasn't as dark as a 10ppm and wasn't as light as a 5ppm. I'm going to check again tomorrow morning. I do hope to see it clearly at 5ppm or lower. I find it impressive that it is going down at all given their output. When I first got these guys at about 2 inches, I had no trouble keeping nitrates below 20ppm with weekly 30% changes.

Their growth caught me off guard and I didn't check nitrates weekly as I should have. Not getting it down to say 5ppm each week, the baseline crept upward until I was probably at around 75-100 at one time. I would do a water change and only get down to maybe 50ppm and not know it. With these guys, I check weekly and I check the pH. That was dropping on me too and I didn't expect it. My 20 long is static at 7.7. But it spooked me when I found the goldie tank at 7.2 or so. That was an eye opener.

I did read more from the packet. If you have alot of nitrate, it recommends recharging every 5 days until you get down to 20ppm, then you can go about 2 weeks or when the nitrate is above 20ppm again. This makes sense. By doing several water changes 12 hours apart, I took it to 20 to start, which was a good way to go, rather than make the packet do all the work.

I'm curious as to what tomorrow's reading will be. So far, results look good.

If it goes to 5ppm or zero, I'm going to recharge.

The only problem I have is I wonder if I'll end up with cyano in this tank with no nitrates

Last edited by Cory_Di at 02-Feb-2005 21:38

Last edited by Cory_Di at 02-Feb-2005 22:38

I glad it does work for you, but I havne't got a clue why it didn't work for me. My nitrate levels in my tanks were about 40ppm and water changes wouldn't help as the tap water around here have at least 20ppm (usually more). This pouch was sitting in my filter for weeks (with bi-weekly recharges) and I haven't seen any change in my nitrate levels. It's a mystery to me why my nitrate levels wouldn't drop as my tank is seriously understocked. As you already know, my solution was to start using R/O water and since then my nitrate levels are going down, so are my KH, GH and TDS. All three were pretty high to begin with, so it's all good in my case.

Still, I'm interested to know if it continues to work. You never know if you're going to need it. Keep me posted. Thanks.

Well, this morning, it is holding at about 8ppm. I still find that incredible being that it goes up so high weekly. While it is not dropping, just pulling out some of the output is impressive. I'll continue to monitor daily. I may recharge it for the heck of it, not knowing how much it pulled out on the fly.

One challenge is that the bag won't stay flat in the emporer 280. I've tried to find a way to keep it compressed so it is completely spread out, maximizing the amount of water flowing through it. Right now, it's slumped to the bottom of the filter, all bunched up. I'm going to see if I can attack a veggie clip to the inside of the reservoir to hold it up.

Last edited by Cory_Di at 03-Feb-2005 09:47