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My nitrates are still in the 100-120 region and all that the local fish store says is possible is to take several small water changes over the next few days. The issue with thatis my tank ran nonstop for several years with only one fish in it and hardly any maintenance done on it (my parents had given up on the tank, I had not yet taken interest in it.) Therefore, it seems in my mind the only way to amend this is to do partial water changes every day for months and months if water changes is all I can do! Plus I've already read in a thread or two that nitrates will always win the water-change battle simply because I cannot replace all the water at once.

I bought what I thought was hornwort, put it in my tank, and little by little it simply died. Is my flourescent light not bright enough for them, because my amazon swordplant has stayed alive for several years now, and I thought that hornwort would be a low maintenance plant. Plus, it didn't even make a dent in my nitrate readings!]:| Is there a fragile plant that looks like hornwort which is locally available in fish stores? Could my nitrates be so high that it killed the plants (too much of a good thing)? Help. Pleeaase

*Proceeds to smash his head against the wall*

Go do the water changes. You seem to be thinking of a water change as though it takes out a constant amount of nitrates. It doesn't. If you do a 50% water change, nitrates should drop by 50%. If you keep doing 50% changes for four or five days, you should get nitrates down to a reasonable level. In fact, disregarding the waste output of the fish, eight days of 25% water changes should get you back down to 12-15 ppm nitrates. Then you can try to establish some kind of normal water change schedule.

Yes, nitrates will always win, if "winning" means "they're in the tank". You can't avoid that. All you can do is prevent them from getting too high with a water change schedule. The reason that nitrates are so high in your tank is because water hasn't been changed in two years and the fish has been producing waste this whole time.

are you doing water changes weekly

Hey plasmax000, have you tested your water source for nitrAtes? I have meet some people who have nitrAtes in the water source. I am not saying this is your problem, but I'm curious to know if you have check?

Plasma, according to Hiscock's "Encyclopedia of Aquarium Plants" high nitrates will in fact kill plants at substantially lower levels than will stress fish - 30ppm is suggested as being damaging to at least some plants. That could explain why your hornwort died.


[span class="edited"][Edited by Silverlight 2004-08-12 17:41][/span]

Alright, I'll try the water changes. I hope you're right Silver, and thanks for the help.

No, I have not been doing weekly water changes. What I have been doing is 25% changes every 2 weeks since when I took over the tank from my family because I was tired of having an algae farm in the family room a little over half a year ago. Finally, yes, I am certain it is nitRATes that are high.

Oh, yeah, by the way, do as Smithgrind says. Take 5ml of water straight out of the tap instead of the tank and run the nitrate test on it. In general, if your tapwater has, say, 5ppm nitrates in it, you will never ever get your nitrates below 5ppm through water changes.

On the other hand you can look at the bright side and know that you'll never need a nitrogen fertilizer for your garden because your hose is doing it for you.

If one uses NitraZorb it will absorb the nitrates to a level that is safe for the fish. The best part is that it can be recharged for reuse.