nitrate

I have nitrate of 2, what should I do and will this kill everything in my tank?

 

At 2, the worst case scenario is that you'll start to develop nuisance algae, most likely GHA or diatom. Fish can tolerate up to 50 without any noticeable discomfort; with corals and inverts, you should keep it at 5 or less.

Cheers

 

Water change is your quickest way of lowering the nitrates in your tank. Though nitrates can spur the growth of unwanted microalgae, they are also food for many living animals that reside within your tank such as filter feeders.
I would try to get a grasp as to why your nitrate levels are high and from that work on ways of correcting this so it doesn't become commonplace in the future.

 

Do 20% water changes every other week for about a month or two and it should drop to 0 in no time.

Also increase your flow in the tank to combat algae problems.

2 is not horrible either!!!

 

Curious, what test could show 2? Do you mean 20 ppm.? If truly 2, that is, for all intents and purposes, 0.

 

nvm your right its 20, i read it as 2.0. I got it done from LFS. So is this bad then?

 

20 is borderline for me but overall your goal is to attain 0.

 

I look at water changes as band aids. Increasing flow could help algae, but won't really do much for nitrates. Definitely need to find the source and address that directly.

Possible sources

1. overfeeding
2. dirty filters
3. overstocking
4. insufficient CuC
5. insufficient live rock
6. insufficient skimming

I don't know which may apply to you, but those are some common sources.

I had the same thought, nice catch jed. I see that was corrected to 20, that sounds better, er, worse, er, correct I mean.

 

If you only have fish I wouldn't be worried about 20ppm, but certainly do something about it before it grows. If you're lazy like me and like to save money, I'd buy an Aquaripure Nitrate Filter. My nitrates have never been detectable since and you only need to do water changes once a month at most. I do a 10g water change on a 90g tank once a month just to replace some trace elements and I've never had problems, plus I have virtually no algae growing on my glass. If you have corals they recommend dosing and more water changes though. Saves a lot of money on salt still. The filter is equivalent to changing out 50g a week.

btw the filter works by converting nitrates to nitrogen gas via anaerobic bacteria. I feed the filter once a week with 5-7ml of vodka and the maintenance involves adjusting a flow tube every 2-3 days, very easy.

 

increased flow can keep food and wastes from settling on rock and substrate and up in the water table. this can make it more likely to be filtered (depending on your type of filtration) and thus allowing them to be removed from the tank before they are converted to nitrates.