# Nitrate at 5PPM, too low for planted tank?



## mgeorges (Feb 1, 2017)

On a low tech tank, 5-10 ppm might be fine. Are you dosing any PO4? Flourish is fine for micros, but it lacks enough NO3 and PO4 for plants. If your phosphate gets too low, leaves will start to be reabsorbed.


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## madcrafted (Dec 23, 2017)

Depends. Are the older leaves starting to yellow from the tips and working it's way to the stem? Nitrogen is mobile and can shift to newer growth if it's deficient. Newer leaves will emerge smaller as well. These are telltale signs of Nitrogen deficiency.


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## MultiTankGuy (Jan 8, 2018)

cor...

A 20 percent water change isn't enough to maintain a healthy water chemistry. Consider gradually increasing the weekly change to at least 50 percent or more. This will maintain good mineral levels and eventually, better plant growth.

M


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## tamsin (Jan 12, 2011)

As your adding excel as well, you may well need to use a complete fertilizer - one with NPK too. The plants will be growing faster and use more up. 

Adding more fish may work, but it's a bit of an unreliable way to fertilise as you can't control how much of what goes in. So I'd go for adding them if you plan to anyway but unless you plan to massively increase stocking I wouldn't factor it in to plants.


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## corgifishkeeper (Apr 27, 2018)

mgeorges said:


> On a low tech tank, 5-10 ppm might be fine. Are you dosing any PO4? Flourish is fine for micros, but it lacks enough NO3 and PO4 for plants. If your phosphate gets too low, leaves will start to be reabsorbed.


I use flake foods, and I was told you do not need to worry about phosphate since there are plenty in flake food, right?

Bump:


MultiTankGuy said:


> cor...
> 
> A 20 percent water change isn't enough to maintain a healthy water chemistry. Consider gradually increasing the weekly change to at least 50 percent or more. This will maintain good mineral levels and eventually, better plant growth.
> 
> M


I have to re-mineralized my water every time after water change, my tap water is very soft, I have to add baking soda and seachem equilibrium to re-mineralized it to maintain my kh/gh at around 7. Wouldn't a higher % water change further lower the nitrate and mineral in my water?


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## Maryland Guppy (Dec 6, 2014)

corgifishkeeper said:


> I use flake foods, and I was told you do not need to worry about phosphate since there are plenty in flake food, right?


This would be an unknown unless you test for PO4.


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## corgifishkeeper (Apr 27, 2018)

I just order a phosphate test kit from amazon should be here next week, what is the proper phosphate level for a planted tank? I am looking into a more completed fertilizer such as thrive and co2 system as well, just hate to see my plants keep dying. 

Who knows keeping plants and fish alive can be so complicated? I got two drawers full of test kits, ferts/buffers, fish foods and still not enough to keep them alive!


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## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

corgifishkeeper said:


> Who knows keeping plants and fish alive can be so complicated? I got two drawers full of test kits, ferts/buffers, fish foods and still not enough to keep them alive!


Welcome to the hobby, you are not alone.

EI fertilization method seems to achive the best results for most people. With that in mind, P within 1 - 5 ppm is a good range to start with. For N, 10 - 30+ ppm is "good enough".

If you are running into issues with a tank (I've read some of your posts) and things are just not working out, it might help to address the tank as a whole, without getting stuck in a single aspect.

I would take a deep breath and start a new thread with a) as much info about the tank as you can think of b) what your goals are for the tank c) what is not working out.

Sometimes, it takes a village - one person can spot something obvious that gets overlooked by others. And that just might be the key to the whole puzzle.


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## Edward (Apr 11, 2005)

Aquarium doesn’t have to have NO3 in order to grow healthy plants since there are other N sources like urea and NH4.


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## mgeorges (Feb 1, 2017)

Edward said:


> Aquarium doesn’t have to have NO3 in order to grow healthy plants since there are other N sources like urea and NH4.


Depends on your setup. None of my high tech tanks would succeed if I didn't dose KNO3, as I run very high light and high CO2. I don't have a large enough bio-load to compensate for the required daily uptake of N for my plants.


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## Edward (Apr 11, 2005)

mgeorges,
your aquariums would be fine if you dosed N in other forms than NO3 as well.


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## mgeorges (Feb 1, 2017)

Edward said:


> mgeorges,
> your aquariums would be fine if you dosed N in other forms than NO3 as well.


I should have phrased that as "My tanks wouldn't succeed if I didn't dose N." Yes, other N sources would work, KNO3 is just the most commonly used and what I personally use. The point was more that something needs to be dosed in many, if not most, cases. After re-reading your post, perhaps I misunderstood and you weren't saying that an N source doesn't need to be dosed, just that NO3 isn't the only option.


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## Xiaozhuang (Feb 15, 2012)

If you are using an inert substrate 5ppm may be low.
However, if you are using aquasoils or root fertilization, measuring 5ppm or below is perfectly fine, even with high light and hungry plants.
Measuring residual levels in the water column isn't the best or most accurate way to tune in ferts anyway.

My farm tank measures less than 5ppm in the water column, and I dose around 1ppm NO3 a day.


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## corgifishkeeper (Apr 27, 2018)

I just got my phosphate test kit, the phosphate is around 0.25 PPM. I also look at the plant deficiency chart and my plant situation is pretty close to the phosphate and nitrogen deficiency as shown in the picture below. There are yellowing of the old leaves with black dots on them, and some of the newer leaves are yellowing/dying as well. 

I don't need to feed a lot of flakes since the only fish that eats the flake are my guppies, my platies and honey gourami seem to prefer the algae/bacteria that's growing on my wood/plant surface as I only see them picking off stuff from there. 

Can I increase my phosphate and nitrogen by adding extra flake food to my tank? The uneaten flake food will get broken down to more phosphate and nitrogen for the plants. I have a 20G tank but I am using a hob filter that's designed for at least 40G (200 GPH flow) and I modified the filter to add filter sponge on the intake with additional filter sponge on the inside along with 500 ml of seachem matrix filter media so there are plenty of filter capacity for ammonia/nitrite.

If not, any good fertilizer you guys recommend? I am considering either Thrive or easy green, they seem to have higher concentration of N and P than the flourish comp I am using now. Or should I get the flourish Nitrogen and phosphate for dedicated N and P source along with the flourish comp?


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## cryptopi (Jan 5, 2018)

If you know what the plants need, I would recommend you to make your own mix. You will save money in the long run and you can add the exact amount needed. 


I have started using fertilizers from this company recently. The plants are doing ok so far. 

https://www.mbferts.com


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## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

> Measuring residual levels in the water column isn't the best or most accurate way to tune in ferts anyway[\QUOTE]
> 
> @Xiaozhuang: what would be a better way?
> In your farm tank, what are you measuring and what are the values? Thanks.


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## Xiaozhuang (Feb 15, 2012)

Better way is to follow a fixed dosing schedule; and observe changes based on changing of that fixed schedule across a slightly longer horizon.

For example; Dosing 1ppm NO3 daily for 1 month - observe, then change system to say dosing 2ppm NO3 daily for the next 1 month, then observe. End of 2 month window; compare notes on systems run either way. Then test the next variable. 

Rather than saying targeting 10ppm NO3 in water column - by dosing say 1ppm for day 1, then realize need to up dose to 2ppm in day 3, then next week tweak again to change dose to 1.5ppm in an attempt to hit or maintain 10ppm levels. The problem with residual level tweaking is that it lags, is subjected to testing inaccuracies (test kit errors, precipitation, etc) and creates unhelpful fluctuations. Also there is a difference between residual levels in the water and actual plant uptake rates, while folks seem to take the 2 to be the same to too high a degree. As a general comment - I think that that is why so many folks have unstable results/outcomes.
I think residual level testing can be a hint of how to proceed forward; i.e. if you are measuring 40ppm nitrates at end of week when the week's accumulative dose is 40ppm, then dosing more is probably not going to do much. But it should not be used as target, so to speak. 

some additional points
1. It takes longer than most folks think for full adaptation to a regime to happen. Plants are also affected by past history; tissue that grew in the tank's past state is optimized for that state... 
2. Stuff work holistically, so sometimes you need to tweak more than 1 variable to get an impact, this is why narrowing down cause and effect is innately quite difficult. In general I think folks need to look at the system as a whole, rather than tweak 1 variable and just because changes is seen due to tweaking that 1 variable - that they establish a direct casual link. Many folks say " oh X is the only change I did, so Y happened - it must be X that caused Y". In reality, there may be a whole of other things going on that is not measured or not observed by a less experienced person. Or that X caused Z which caused K which then caused Y. But there are many other factors that can change Z or K that do not stay consistent. Or that X caused Y only when K & Z at are this levels, while X doesn't cause Y when K & Z are below this level. The causation chain is often complicated.
3. You need a baseline system that is very stable to do any testing at all, else noise is louder than the signal. TBH, at the risk of sounding high-handed... I think most folks just do not have good enough base-line fundamentals to draw good conclusions. If a guy can run 1 tank well, he may have learned the system well enough to play that one game, but it doesn't always translate into information that can be used in another scenario or tank. If the guy can replicate good growth results across 20 tanks in a long time horizon... then I will start trusting his conclusions.


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