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High Nitrate Level for Koi
"MC" wrote in message ... What do you mean by "low quality food"? What types of food helps keep the nitrates low? I don't see the food quality as having anything to do with Nitrates though excess feed can promote a rise in Phosphates in the Aquarium world....Nitrates are just the end product from any mature bio filter - Ammonia, Nitrites & then Nitrates. There are a few other things you can do to help deal with Nitrates.... 1) Buy something like a Nitragon or Nitraking Nitrate filter....usually used for tap water to prepare Nitrate free water for aquariums. You can stick one on a pump but it needs to be quite powerfull (in aquarium terms - nothing like a pond pump!) 2) Buy some "Nitrazorb" - works on the same principle as above but goes in the filter (or can just sit in the water - its in a porous sachet). You'd probably need quite a lot of it (depending on how much water you are dealing with) and its not cheap. Both of these are Ion exchange filters i.e. they need to be recharged with salt water (much like a domestic water softener) periodically. Something like a Nitragon will give you roughly 75-100 gallons of Nitrate free tap water before it needs a recharge though you can get bigger units. Option 3 is to run up a bacterial nitrate filter. Do a google search for "Nitrate filter" and you will find some discussion about how these work & links to sites detailing how you can build them fairly cheaply. They take a week or 3 to run them up - basically you create an Anaerobic filter by passing water through it very slowly - this becomes oxygen free as it passes through the filter. You get bacteria building up which then eat Nitrate to get Oxygen thus releasing Nitrogen. They can be tricky. Run it too slowly & you get sulphur dioxide, too fast & the filter breaks down because you need an oxygen free environment. You also have to feed the filter periodically with Alcohol of some description (I think!) A fourth option is to buy a sulphur based Nitrate filter. I have one of these on a 75G fish tank which is heavily stocked & it has zero Nitrates. This works in much the same way as option 3 above but does not require feeding - the sulphur removes the need for this apparently. One "side effect" of this type of filter is that it seems to strip the Kh buffer out of the water - and does so quite quickly. As a result I add Baking Soda (Bicarbonate of SOda) to my tank every few days. Its a bit of a pain BUT a lot less aggravation than dealing with Nitrates by constantly changing water. This side effect may apply to option 3 above as well - no direct experience of use so I can't say! HTH rgds Iain |
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