nitrate

[Chloe'*]

Hellooo guys

I just had a massive nitrate spike a few days ago. I have no dead plants, and no new additions to the tank. I have done 2, 50% water changes which appeared to do nothing... so I have 'de nitrate' in my filter at the moment. I hope it works. Any ideas what else could have caused it?

Chloe

[Greggy]

A Nitrate (NO3) spike? That is odd as usually Nitrate builds up (accumulates) over time if water changes are not frequent enough. Does your tap water contain Nitrate? If so perhaps you changed a large amount of water and introduced the extra Nitrate to your tank?

Generally all cycled tanks will have some levels of Nitrate, unless you are doing massive (90% plus) twice daily water changes which would then keep them to almost nothing.

If your running a planted tank then a small amount of Nitrate is actually good for the plants. If your running a very well planted tank (like me) your Nitrates levels should be very low due to the plants gobbling them up. For example I've never seen Nitrate at more than 5ppm in my 7 month old 6x2x2 planted Discus tank. In fact usually they are only around 2.5ppm (just above detection level).

Can you tell us a little more about your tank including your water change regime etc

Regards,

Greggy

[Chloe'*]

Thanks for your post Greg.

Basically I do 1/3 water change once a week. It's not heavily planted, only 2 plants and 4 discus. I think what happened is... I put a log in that I bought from an Aquarium. It had apparently already been treated but I think that's where the nitrate came from. My tank literally went yellow within about 48 hours of the log going in. I was using de nitrate and did many water changes but it was still dangerously high, so I did a massive 90% overhaul today. But the log is the only thing that makes sense to me... :S

Chloe

[gypsy3]

chloe, the yellow water is probably normal, just the driftwood leaching tannins. a lot of driftwoods do this, turning the water ayellow color. the discus love this kind of water

[nicholas76]

nothing wrong with the timber.

Id suggest you test your nitrate kit as well.

If your doing a 90% w/c and your nitrate reading is high then somthing has drastically got to be wrong with the kit in my opinoin


how big is the tank? tank mates how many? give us a run down.

[Professor_J]

I would also be curious about the accuracy of your test kit and that's the first place I'd look.

Nitrates in your tap water all of a sudden aren't too likely. Not impossible, just not likely.

I'd take some fresh tap water and your test kit to your LFS and see about testing it there against one of their kits or something like that.

While not impossible, I wouldn't think that the wood would be a source of nitrates. I can't see where the nitrates could come from in the wood unless it had been soaked in or otherwise contaminated by a fertilizer or some metal-nitrate preservative (which would cause innumerable other headaches for you)