Hey do I lower High levels of nitrate?

There are various ways of keeping your nitrate level low. Obviously the first way is to carry out regular water changes. Most people keeping Oscars will need to carry out one water Change per week. However under certain circumstances such as small and overstocked aquariums, keeping nitrate down can be an ongoing battle. You may find yourself doing more than one more to change a week.

There are chemicals on the market that remove nitrate. I don't like these products as all they do is make people lazy.

If you test your water for nitrate on a regular basis , you will get an idea of how often you will need to carry out water changes to keep the nitrate at an acceptable level. You shouldn't let your nitrate levels exceed 40 ppm, but obviously the lower the nitrate, the healthier your fish will be in the long run

OFL wrote:


X2 ofl has said it all........

x3 it dont get no clearer than that:cheer:

x4

Hi i have the samequestion as posted this is whats wrong though. i live in a small town the Nitrate in town is right around 8 but the ph is around 8.0 andhas high Alkalinity around 280 but my mom lives on a farm with well water and the ph is at 7.2 and Alkalinity is 100. But her Nitrate is off the charts is there a way where i can make the Nitrates dope so i can use the well water instead of city water? I cant seem to get my Ph to drop. I tried Drift wood and Peat. But a no go. I dont want to use anything because all it will do is mast the water for a short time. any Ideas?

If the pH is 8.0 coming out of the tap then every time you carry out a water change, the pH is going to approach that once again. I shouldn't worry, 8.0 is okay, you don't want it getting any higher, the Oscars can live perfectly okay in this. You may find that within time, the pH will start dropping but like I said, it will go up every time you carry the water change.

Now I'm a little confused about your nitrate, you said it was 8, is it 8, or 80? If it is only 8 then I shouldn't worry, if you are keeping your fish in the correct size aquarium then you won't having to worry about, a water change once a week should be okay. However if it is indeed 80, then that could be a problem. The only thing I could suggest in circumstances such as this is to get a nitrate filter, or chemicals that will remove nitrate.

My Nitrate on my home water is at a 8 and at my moms house its at 180. my moms house has the lower ph that im looking for though.

Eight is perfectly okay, however if the tap water at your mothers contains nitrate levels at 180 ppm then it is not possible to keep fish. I don't even think a nitrate filter would help.

However, I'm a little dubious about this level, how does it possibly get that high? Is it drinkable at that level?

well i tested it just to see because theres no clorine in the water. i know when they got it drilled it had been tested about 3 years ago. they said they can drink it but no children can. so my mom and them just buy bottled water to drink. I know they had a tank from the old home and when they moved it they had to put water into the tank but supprisingly the fish never died. i dont get it at all but owell im not gonna take the chance on killing my Oscar. I know my mom told me that the person that tested it said that they could do something to the well to make the Nitrates go down. But it very costly to them.

What you've got to remember is that nitrates is nowhere near as toxic as ammonia or nitrite. I've no way of confirming whether this is true or not but a well-known website that I can't remember the name of says that fish do not feel the effects of nitrate until it reaches 100 ppm. Because it's not a toxin like ammonia or nitrite, fish don't actually die from poisoning.

High nitrate actually causes stress fish to become stressed which may result in illnesses and diseases, that's what kills them. So you may find that some fish survive perfectly okay in water with very high nitrate levels. They must do, I dread to think what the nitrate levels are in some goldfish bowls, and these fish have been known to live for years in those conditions.

The Oscar just seems to be one of those fish that is prone to various diseases and does not tolerate poor water conditions