phosphate/nitrate question
jlatrei
Hi! One guy at a petstore told me that if my nitrate and phosphate levels
get very high, it is impossible to lower them by water changes, unless I do a
100% water change. Is this true? how harmfull are nitrates/phosphate on plants
and fish?
whipet.....
Bit Nybbler
> whipet.....
Was he saying that if you do a weekly 25% water change with water
containing 0% nitrate or phosphate that you would not remove 25% of
those from your aquarium each week? That would be wrong. It will lower
them, but not eliminate them. Many pet store employees have very little
knowledge and some of that is wrong. There are exceptions.
Plants use nitrates and phosphates as food, but so does algae. Fish are
affected far more by ammonia and nitrites. Some fish are more sensitive
to nitrates than others. There may be many opinions about acceptable
nitrate levels, but a 25% water change each week, with water appropriate
for your fish, will keep nitrate levels in a reasonable range. There are
other aquarium waste products you should control, from animals, plants,
and excess food. The water changes serve the same purpose with those
too.
Bit Nybbler
For email remove the ".nojunk" from my address.
patrick timlin
jlatrei (jla...@mediom.qc.ca) wrote:
: Hi! One guy at a petstore told me that if my nitrate and phosphate levels
: get very high, it is impossible to lower them by water changes, unless I do a
: 100% water change. Is this true? how harmfull are nitrates/phosphate
: on plants and fish?
No this is completely false. If your new water has less nitrates and
phosphates than your tank water, or hopefully zero, then of course the
levels will go down when you make water changes. Does your fishstore guy
think all the nitrates and phosphates run to one side of the tank while
you are siphoning out water? After all these things are measured in
parts per million, so if you replace some of the water with 0.0 ppm
nitrates and phosphates, then obviously the overall ppm levels will be
diluted to something lower than when you started. Geez, ya gotta wonder
where these people get their info from. Apparently they just pull it out
of their butts as they go along.
: whipet.....
whipet good! doo doo da doo doo ....da <crack>.... da <crack>
Patrick Timlin http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/4742/
pti...@geocities.com
Paul Meyers
jlatrei wrote:
>
> Hi! One guy at a petstore told me that if my nitrate and phosphate levels
> get very high, it is impossible to lower them by water changes, unless I do a
> 100% water change. Is this true? how harmfull are nitrates/phosphate on plants
> and fish?
>
No. You do not need to do a 100% water change. Even if you did do a
100% water
change, you would not eliminate the nitrates. You would only be dilote
them.
Basically, nitrates are the solid leftovers from the nitrogen cycle.
Ammonia
is turned into nitrites which is then turned into a less harmful
nitrates. By
doing gravel cleanings you can remove some, not all, of the nitrates.
Since
both water and nitrates are removed, when you add clean water you change
the
ratio of nitrates to water. Thus cleaning the system.
Now, if your nitrates have gotten out of control, basically really high,
then
you might have to change more water. That is way most people do 10%
weekly
water changes. If you change the water less frequently, then you need
to up the
percentage. Another factor is the amount of food you feed your fish.
The more
that goes into the tank, the more that has to come out. Simple...
Good luck,
Paul Meyers
E.M. Ennis
jlatrei (jla...@mediom.qc.ca) wrote:
: Hi! One guy at a petstore told me that if my nitrate and phosphate levels
: get very high, it is impossible to lower them by water changes, unless I do a
: 100% water change. Is this true? how harmfull are nitrates/phosphate on plants
: and fish?
: whipet.....
An analogy.
You have a jar filled with red jellybeans. You take out half of
the red jelly beans and put in half a jar of blue jellybeans. You now
have half as many jellybeans as you had before. :) Unless you have high
levels of both in your water (i.e. higher than in your tank) water
changes will reduce anything that builds up in your aquarium (within
reason...no crazy posts about how water changes won't reduce the number
of fish, etc etc etc...).
-Erin...
--
=========================
Mr. Erin M. Ennis |
een...@zoo.uvm.edu |
Water Resources Major, |
Uni. of Vermont |
=========================
Ruth Klein
E.M. Ennis wrote:
>
> jlatrei (jla...@mediom.qc.ca) wrote:
> : Hi! One guy at a petstore told me that if my nitrate and phosphate levels
> : get very high, it is impossible to lower them by water changes, unless I do a
> : 100% water change. Is this true? how harmfull are nitrates/phosphate on plants
> : and fish?
>
> : whipet.....
>
> An analogy.
> You have a jar filled with red jellybeans. You take out half of
> the red jelly beans and put in half a jar of blue jellybeans. You now
> have half as many jellybeans as you had before. :) Unless you have high
> levels of both in your water (i.e. higher than in your tank) water
> changes will reduce anything that builds up in your aquarium (within
> reason...no crazy posts about how water changes won't reduce the number
> of fish, etc etc etc...).
> -Erin...
>
jellybeans and 1 on 10 was red, the changing 1/2 the water will only get
rid of 50 red jelly beans (10% of 500). This is the best argument for
making frequent water changes and not letting those _red jellybeans_
build up too high!
j...@ingress.com
In article <5rniil$9kr$1...@wagner.videotron.net>, jla...@mediom.qc.ca
(jlatrei) wrote:
Hi! One guy at a petstore told me that if my nitrate and phosphate levels
get very high, it is impossible to lower them by water changes, unless I do
a
100% water change. Is this true? how harmfull are nitrates/phosphate on
plants
and fish?
whipet.....
nitrate and phosphate usually come from different sources. nitrate exists
because
of the normal biological activity in your tank (ammonia-nitrite-nitrate).
excess
waste causes excess nitrate, over 20 ppm. water changes will dilute the
nitrate
but if the waste is still present, the nitrate rebounds immediately. it's
best to
thoroughly clean the tank and filters during the water change. chemical
resins are also available but their effectiveness is limited at high nitrate
levels.
phosphate generally comes in from the tap water so changes only exacerbate
the problem, especially because evaporated water leaves the phosphate
behind. the best solution in most cases is to filter the water in the tank
with a phosphate absorber (precision aquariums has a good one) in the short
term and to filter the water coming from the tap with either an R.O. unit or
a deioniser.
hope i helped
john
Damon Hill
> Hi! One guy at a petstore told me that if my nitrate and phosphate levels
> get very high, it is impossible to lower them by water changes, unless I do
> a
> 100% water change. Is this true? how harmfull are nitrates/phosphate on
> plants
> and fish?
>
> whipet.....
Hmmmm, that advice sounds a bit...ahem...fishy to me.
Water changes are probably the BEST way to reduce nitrates and
phosphates. Now it's true you probably won't be able to eliminate them
completely, but frequent changes and an efficient filter can keep them
diluted to a safe level.
I'm sure if I'm mistaken someone will correct me on this, but I don't
believe nitrates and phosphates are harmful in small amounts, although
phosphates do tend to promote algae growth.
---PHIL
Paul Meyers
> > : get very high, it is impossible to lower them by water changes, unless I do a
> > : 100% water change. Is this true? how harmfull are nitrates/phosphate on plants
> > : and fish?
> >
> > : whipet.....
> >
> > You have a jar filled with red jellybeans. You take out half of
> > the red jelly beans and put in half a jar of blue jellybeans. You now
> > have half as many jellybeans as you had before. :) Unless you have high
> > levels of both in your water (i.e. higher than in your tank) water
> > changes will reduce anything that builds up in your aquarium (within
> > reason...no crazy posts about how water changes won't reduce the number
> > of fish, etc etc etc...).
> > -Erin...
> >
> Actually, read a better analogy.... If you have a jar with 1000
> jellybeans and 1 on 10 was red, the changing 1/2 the water will only get
> rid of 50 red jelly beans (10% of 500). This is the best argument for
> making frequent water changes and not letting those _red jellybeans_
> build up too high!
I don't think you ment to say 10% of 500. Basically, there is 100 red
ones (1 in 10 or 10% of 1000). So if you take out 50% of the water, you
will
take out 50% of the red and 50% of the others. Therefore leaving
50 reds behind. Add in clean beans (non-red). You will not have 50 in
1000 or
5% red. Now, have you drop the percentage enough for the environment to
become
healthy? That is a question for you fish to answer. Remember, they are
adding
to the problem you are trying to fix. So that 5% example above is
rapidly
trying to get back to 10% again.
Good luck,
Paul Meyers
Daniel Ewing
> > E.M. Ennis wrote:
> > > jlatrei (jla...@mediom.qc.ca) wrote:
> > > : whipet.....
> > > An analogy.
> Good luck,
> Paul Meyers
Okay, not to start a war, but here is a better analogy:
You (the nitro - bacters) work in a jelly bean factory. Every worker in
the factory manufacturs jelly beans of a unique size (they are color
coded for convinience).
Now filling up a fish tank of jelly beans, where all the different
colors have aunique size allows for a loading matrix where even though
the tank may be "full" there are gaps between the jelly beans where
little ones can be worked into an active (well stired) matrix.
So, lets say the tank is full and 30 PPM of the beans are little tiny
orange nitrate beans. Try all you want -- this is the best (critical)
loading you can achieve in the current matrix. Consequently, you (the
nitro - bacters) cease and desist the manufacture of orange beans. Your
work station starts to pile up with raw bean material (waste).
Well, along comes some helpful chilren who remove a uniform mix of multi
- colored beans and refill the tank with large aqua (water) beans. Well,
hells bells, son you can start pumping out those little orange buggers
again like there is no tomorrow. This actiity continues until,
reletively quickly, the matrix is again at critical orange capacity.
So the moral of the story is ... keep your workstation clean!
--
Dan
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