Chris jowett
Seedling
Morning,
I am having a hard time with my nitrate levels at the moment they roughly sitting at 40ppm.
Bit of back ground. 120litres tank (dirt tank), been running for around 4-5 months now and live stock is around 20 red cherry shrimp and 4 Otto Cats.
My tank is heavily planted and is low tech (no co2 injection) my cycling took around 4-5 weeks, I was seeing the soil leech a lot of ammonia up to 3ppm at one point and this helped my complete my cycle. Over last 3-5 weeks however I cannot get me nitrate down, it was easy when I didn't have shrimp in my tank but because I am fairly new at keeping shrimp and all the research tells me to do around 10-20% water changes a week, however I dont think this is helping with the nitrate levels. I use to change 40% - 50% per week as per recommendation when dosing aquascaper complete Fert but I am told this isn't good for RCS
I am seeing good growth in the plants and floating plants and livestock seem to be doing okay, the RCS are molting, however I do believe I found a shrimp dead this morning for the first time.
Rest of my reading, ammonia is 0, nitrites are 0. My TDS pen broke but it was sitting at 220, new one arrives tomorrow.
I guess I am trying to under why my nitrate levels at 40ppm, ideally I need this to be lower but I haven't a clue what is causing it and I did wonder if I should start to increase my water changes but just worried about the RCS
any thoughts would be great
thanks
Chris
I am having a hard time with my nitrate levels at the moment they roughly sitting at 40ppm.
Bit of back ground. 120litres tank (dirt tank), been running for around 4-5 months now and live stock is around 20 red cherry shrimp and 4 Otto Cats.
My tank is heavily planted and is low tech (no co2 injection) my cycling took around 4-5 weeks, I was seeing the soil leech a lot of ammonia up to 3ppm at one point and this helped my complete my cycle. Over last 3-5 weeks however I cannot get me nitrate down, it was easy when I didn't have shrimp in my tank but because I am fairly new at keeping shrimp and all the research tells me to do around 10-20% water changes a week, however I dont think this is helping with the nitrate levels. I use to change 40% - 50% per week as per recommendation when dosing aquascaper complete Fert but I am told this isn't good for RCS
I am seeing good growth in the plants and floating plants and livestock seem to be doing okay, the RCS are molting, however I do believe I found a shrimp dead this morning for the first time.
Rest of my reading, ammonia is 0, nitrites are 0. My TDS pen broke but it was sitting at 220, new one arrives tomorrow.
I guess I am trying to under why my nitrate levels at 40ppm, ideally I need this to be lower but I haven't a clue what is causing it and I did wonder if I should start to increase my water changes but just worried about the RCS
any thoughts would be great
thanks
Chris