New Tank

[sunkenmetal]

what kind of bottom plant?

[Chris.d514]

A dwarf grass, dwarf baby tears or maybe some moss for my rock and driftwood.

[aquabee]

Heya Chris, how's it lookin today? Params any better?

[Chris.d514]

Ammonia .25 nitrite 0 and nitrate 40. I added 2 mystery snails to help with uneaten food.

[aquabee]

Weird. Try another water change and space your feedings to every 2-3 days.

I think many snails don't do much about uneaten food but I don't know much about mystery snails. Try more shrimp, perhaps?

[Chris.d514]

I may stop at the lfs over here and grab 5-10 later.

[Chris.d514]

Got 10 more ghost shrimp. Gotta love 5 for a dollar.

[aquabee]

Got 10 more ghost shrimp. Gotta love 5 for a dollar.

Awesome. Hope things settle out soon. Just barely feed your fish a touch of food, enough for them to finish in 2 minutes, every 2-3 days only til your nitrates come down.

[Chris.d514]

Lowered amount of food they get, changed water every third day and found/removed a dead shrimp from filter. Back down to 20 nitrates.

[aquabee]

Lowered amount of food they get, changed water every third day and found/removed a dead shrimp from filter. Back down to 20 nitrates.

Awesome. Hopefully they'll slowly come down to even lower than that.

[Chris.d514]

So we went out of town this past weekend and I used the Omega One vacation feeders to keep the fish fed. When we got back I noticed that one of our fish that had been staying the corner not eating was not at the top in its corner. I searched the entire tank but was unable to find any sign of it. Also my nitrates are still staying 40-60 mark. I have done water changes everyday for a week i have stirred the sand to release anything caught in it and still nothing. I even rinsed out my filter media in some of the water I removed at a water change(turned a 5 gallon bucket of water black). I have no clue why my nitrates are so high. In the tank I have 2 dwarf gouramis, a german blue ram, 7 formerly painted glass(a few still have specs of the dye but clear for the most part and maybe offered as feeders here soon), 7 zebras/glofish, and 5-10 ghost shrimp. Using an AC30 with sponge pre-filter(added last week). Any other thoughts on my jacked up nitrates?

[eklikewhoa]

your water source probably.

[Bedlamer]

Which test kit are you using? Is it the API one? I just started a thread down in the chemistry section looking for an alternative. You could look around for someone with a different test kit from yours to cross reference the results.

Like Ek said its probably your source, because it seems you covered all the bases.

If nothing else works you could try adding some Seachem De*Nitrate if you can run it in 50 gph or less flow. I just started playing around with it this week--too soon to see anything, but the on-line reviews are mostly that it works well.

[eklikewhoa]

De-nitrate, matrix etc. needs a good length of time for aerobic bacteria to form and the amount you use will be in direct control of the results you get.

If you are running it in a canister or reactor reduce or block out any light you can and the limited about of water flow through them would also provide to be more useful to create an oxygen deprived environment.

[Chris.d514]

Would switching my carbon for purigen help with the high nitrates?