Nitrate Problem

Hey Guys I got a call from a guy that is having some nitrate problems. He can't get his nitrates below 80ppm. He is using city water and he said all of the other tests he has done are prefect. 0 amm. and nitrites.

He had added some new LR to his tank and said it was some good stuff. it was Fiji

I suggested to him to get a RO/DI unit and until he gets one to go buy some water from walmart and do like a 20-30g water change to see if the problem would be the water.

Anyone have any other thoughts on this?

Garrett

check the test kit it could be old.

What's he testing with and what size tank, how many fish. Basic details. Check the nitrates of the water out of the tap and make sure he's not adding more with that. Might just be too overloaded, too much food. He'll have to do a butt load of wc to get it down, the bigger the better.

I am not sure how many fish are in there but it is a 125g If he don't log on here I will call him in a few days to see how things are going.

when i lived in st.cloud and first started out, for the first 4-5 yrs i couldnt get my nitrates down either every thing else was perfect which didn't matter i only had fish with live rock. i did water changes after water changes even used the nitrate spounges (i didn't have on line for help like this back then). then i got my R O unit and every thing seem to start clearing up so my vote would be a ro unit.

Yeah but if the tap is reading zero it's not causing the nitrate problem. If the tap has nitrates than he can only get them as low as the tap water reads. Nitrates aren't coming from nowhere.

True, I will give him a call tomorrow and chat with him about it.

If he just added rock, I'd suspect the rock is causing those issues. Tell him to get ready for some bigtime W/C's. I hope he posts! If I were him, I'd take Tiffany's advice and check the tap to be sure.

I just got off the phone with the guy and he said that the city water has nitrate in it so he ordered a RO/DI unit it will be in on Monday so hopefully that will take care of the problem for him.