(Pictures from first to last: nitrate check yesterday morning, nitrate check after 50% water change, nitrate levels from this morning, nitrate levels after today’s 50% water change, and the tank. Also my nails aren’t dirty, it’s liquid rubber 😅)
I have a 20G long that’s currently housing 3 peppered Cory cats and an obscenely oversized mystery snail named Chernobyl. It’s not heavily planted but it does have plants (two varieties of pothos, two bundles of Java ferns, and two anubias, as well as bamboo roots resting in the water, a few stems of guppy grass, and a thick covering of duckweed). The filter is a 20G sponge filter on a 30G air pump. The last two pictures are pictures of the tank.
I tested my parameters yesterday as this tank is less than a month old; I test them every other day if everything is going well and up to two times a day if any of the measurements are wonky. Nitrates were suddenly sky high when they were around 20ppm two days before. There was no preceding ammonia spike (and the tank was cycled before I added the fish. I dosed it every day with SeaChem prime anyway to keep things as safe as possible for the Corys). I did a 50% water change yesterday and a slightly less than 50% change today, and the nitrate levels definitely went down, but they’re still higher than I’d like. I’d guess down from 100ppm yesterday to 40ppm today. Is my best option daily 50% water changes until they’re back in range? The pH of the tank is on the lower end, around 6.4-6.6, so I’m pretty sure nitrates have less of an effect on fish health, but we’re planning to move our shrimp colony into the tank and I don’t want to do that when the parameters are still screwy.
Thanks, and happy holidays!
Posted by BroccoliNo3355
7 Comments
WC daily is there anything dead in the tank?
Have you tested your tap water?
Test your tap water, and get some floaters like frogbit. The duckweed is good, and if you provide nitrogen-free fertilizer, it’ll grow faster and suck up more nitrates.
The plants exposed to air (versus the ones that are submerged) will grow faster, and in doing so sponge up more nitrates than the submerged plants.
Water changes for now. The plants take a while to acclimate to your water conditions, so they’re probably not eating much nitrate yet. It looks like there is something under the gravel/sand. Is that aquasoil? If so, new aquasoil can leach out nitrate for a while. Also, if you are ferting, keep in mind that you could be measuring your own ferts. As for the acceptable amount of nitrate, there is a lot of debate, but I am ok for up to 60 ppm or so before I take action.
Throw half the duckweed away and let new ones grow.
Test your tap water. Do water changes.
Add some floating plants like wild lettuce, will spread quick enough and help the nitrate cycle
I think i can see some rockwool still on the root system of your plants. You cannont put the rockwool in your aquarium, you need to coomletly remove it before introducing plants. The problem is that it retain fertiliser and most retailer even add small ball of fertiliser inside to promote plant growth. Those fertiliser affect your water quality a lot. Get every plant with rockwool out, clean the roots and put them back in, than maybe 1 or 2 waterchange and you should be good.
https://preview.redd.it/9uslqgeszd9g1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=4d009ff439987558fff09b44fca8e03760e7330d