# Nitrates. What levels are safe?



## Nazasaki (Sep 10, 2015)

So I'm doing some research on Nitrates since my tank has been staying steady at about 20ish ppm. Its a little hard to tell the color differences for the API master test kit, looks about 20, maybe 40? So what is an acceptable level. I'm seeing a lot of people say 0-20 and I'm also seeing people claim that it doesn't matter what the level is. What do you guys keep your tanks at? The tank in question is a semi planted 29 gallon with three juvenile blood parrots and about 4 nerite snails. All other values are testing perfect. 
Ammonia-0 
Nitrite-0
Ph- 7.5


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## Freemananana (Jan 2, 2015)

I tend to keep mine around 20ppm after a water change and they go back up to around 40ppm over the week. Ideally, 0-20ppm would be achieved. But that may not be plausible. I do believe they are important to keep in check though, like anything else. I wouldn't put fish in a tank with 160ppm nitrate. 

I was able to achieve ~10ppm nitrate after heavily planting a tank.


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## Maryland Guppy (Dec 6, 2014)

Nazasaki said:


> looks about 20, maybe 40? So what is an acceptable level. I'm seeing a lot of people say 0-20 and I'm also seeing people claim that it doesn't matter what the level is. What do you guys keep your tanks at?


Orange (any shade thereof) :grin2:


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## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

40 ppm in a planted tank. At 0, what are your plants eating?


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## GrampsGrunge (Jun 18, 2012)

OVT said:


> 40 ppm in a planted tank. At 0, what are your plants eating?


If the pH is slightly acid, the plants will preferentially choose Ammonium over Nitrates, takes less energy for them to process.


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## discuspaul (Jul 27, 2010)

For most tropical fish species, under 40 ppm is considered acceptable, but more preferably under 30 ppm.
For Discus, Angels, Cardinal Tetras, certainly not more than 20 ppm, but preferably under 10 ppm.


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## Nazasaki (Sep 10, 2015)

Maryland Guppy said:


> Orange (any shade thereof) :grin2:


Great! So orange it is! As long as I'm in the orange or yellow think I will be fine?


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## SpaceLord (Feb 29, 2016)

GrampsGrunge said:


> If the pH is slightly acid, the plants will preferentially choose Ammonium over Nitrates, takes less energy for them to process.


I should put ammonium in my tank for better plant growth?


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## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

SpaceLord said:


> I should put ammonium in my tank for better plant growth?


You can try if you have no fish or if you like you fish upside down.

Technically, yes, the plants will consume ammonium before anything else. That is one of the reasons why we consider plants to be a natural filter.

Practically, you really do not want any measurable ammonia in a tank with any live critters.


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## Mathman (Apr 5, 2009)

Hold on a sec...please correct me if I am wrong. According to my online readings (not sure how credible the information is since it comes from other people in the forums) when using API test kit for nitrate we have to divide our readings by 4.4

So, if your test kit reads 20pppm, you really have about 4.5 ppm in the tank.

Is this true, do we have to divide our results by 4.4?

Here's where I read this:

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f14/total-nitrate-vs-nitrate-nitrogen-220902.html


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## roadmaster (Nov 5, 2009)

If one has planted their tank with enough plant's ,and plant's are growing/thriving,then biggest worry will be providing enough nitrogen (Nitrates).
In fish only tank's, I am on board with discusPaul and have found that 50% weekly water changes keep the level's low assuming the tank's aren't grossly over fed or over stocked.


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## Freemananana (Jan 2, 2015)

Never supplement ammonia to the tank.


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## GrampsGrunge (Jun 18, 2012)

SpaceLord said:


> I should put ammonium in my tank for better plant growth?


 As the rest of the respondents have mentioned, Ammonia should never be dosed to tank stocked with fish.. ever!

The thing is, fish are always excreting urea, which in it's first biological breakdown reaction, changes to ammonia. There is no such thing as 'Ammonium' outside of ammonia in solution with water. It has a lot to do with complex molecular weak bonding, electron transfers, and hydroxyl and oxygen ions. If it interests you, you should take some 2 Year College biology courses, focusing on water biology, if they aren't teaching it in high school. Some Chemistry wouldn't hurt either.

I only mentioned ammonium because in soft, slightly acid water tanks, ammonia ions are present in far greater percentages as ammonium ions, which are not caustic to fish gills, and the plants will prefer to use it over nitrates.

This is not something you should ever experiment with! It's just a natural by-product of the breakdown of the ever present fish, microbiological and plant wastes. In a healthy tank, with good plant growth these levels of Ammonia/Ammonium are at very small levels, you would have to have fairly alkaline tank water and some pretty bad tank husbandry to end up with high, ( i.e. fish damaging..) ammonia ion levels.


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## PlantedRich (Jul 21, 2010)

I find there are lots more things to read and confuse me than I can sort through, at times. So I have to look at what I find and figure out what to believe and what not. We all have different tanks, different water and different levels of the way we read the tests so there is going to be a difference in the results. 
A big step for me was finding the API liquid test is not usable in my water once I get much past 10-20PPM. It just goes off scale! I now use the test strips which give me the best reading at the levels my tanks normally run. But that also gives me reason to doubt what my actual levels are much of the time. The choices seem to be that what I read about African cichlids needing super clean water is wrong or any test I've used is wrong. I've kept and bred 10-12 different groups of African's and the readings are often in the 80 and above level. 
Eyes reading wrong, test sets wrong or fish that like dirty water? Somewhere there is a disconnect in the info I read so I now just go with keeping those readings in the "normal" range for my tanks and no longer worry the exact level. As long as it is where it always seems to be, that is good enough. 
Fish and plants happy, I'm happy!!


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## MtAnimals (May 17, 2015)

my best growing plant tank is a 5 gallon that I dose ammonia in.No fish of course,but I dose about .25 ml of 10% ammonium hydroxide each day to keep the tank cycled,or at least that's how it started.

that tank grows plants better than any tank I dose ferts in,and it just has the stock spec light on it.


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## KevinC (May 24, 2004)

Mathman said:


> Hold on a sec...please correct me if I am wrong. According to my online readings (not sure how credible the information is since it comes from other people in the forums) when using API test kit for nitrate we have to divide our readings by 4.4
> 
> So, if your test kit reads 20pppm, you really have about 4.5 ppm in the tank.
> 
> ...


Different units. Test kits usually report milligrams of nitrate (NO3) per liter (ppm NO3) while the EPA and others talk about milligrams of N in the form of NO3 per liter (ppm N as NO3). Since the second unit doesn't include the weight of the oxygen atoms, dividing the first by 4.4 gets you the second. All the earlier comments in this thread seemed to be referring to mg NO3 per liter.


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## micheljq (Oct 24, 2012)

Never dose ammonium, even in a tank without fauna. It has been identified as a major algae bloomer.

Michel.


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## Maryland Guppy (Dec 6, 2014)

Nazasaki said:


> Great! So orange it is! As long as I'm in the orange or yellow think I will be fine?


All jokes aside I use the stop light approach.
Yellow I dose more KNO3.
Orange all is well.
Red I plan a water change.


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## Nazasaki (Sep 10, 2015)

Maryland Guppy said:


> All jokes aside I use the stop light approach.
> Yellow I dose more KNO3.
> Orange all is well.
> Red I plan a water change.


Easy to understand and makes sense to me. Thanks! I'll use that from now on.


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## SpaceLord (Feb 29, 2016)

GrampsGrunge said:


> As the rest of the respondents have mentioned, Ammonia should never be dosed to tank stocked with fish.. ever!
> 
> The thing is, fish are always excreting urea, which in it's first biological breakdown reaction, changes to ammonia. There is no such thing as 'Ammonium' outside of ammonia in solution with water. It has a lot to do with complex molecular weak bonding, electron transfers, and hydroxyl and oxygen ions. If it interests you, you should take some 2 Year College biology courses, focusing on water biology, if they aren't teaching it in high school. Some Chemistry wouldn't hurt either.
> 
> ...


Ok, I understand. I won't put ammonia in the tank. I don't need to go to a special 2 years of school to prove a single point of not putting ammonia in the tank. 

I have already lost too many fish due to having too much ammonia. 

However something you may want to consider is that if you have Chloramines in your tap water and use a water conditioner to take out the chlorine, you will be left with just ammonia as a byproduct. 

Since Chloramines are both ammonia and chlorine mixed together. 

Certain product like prime can temporarily make the ammonia safe by deonizing it for like 24-48 hours which hopefully is enough time for the plants and biological filtration to fix it.


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## GrampsGrunge (Jun 18, 2012)

Chlorine

slected quotes from the webpage..



> ...You have two choices which will depend upon the methods used by your local water treatment plant to deal with bacteria in the water supply. 1) If you have only chlorine in the tapwater use any product that contains sodium thiosulfate. DECHLOR-IT by Aquatronics and CHLORINE REMOVER by Fritz are two products which I have found to be adequate. 2) If you have chloramine you can use AMQUEL safely. As an alternative, if your pH is below 7.5 in the tank, the water contains less than 1 ppm chloramine, the water change is 30% or less, you have lots of growing plants or decent biological filtration, you will be fine using sodium thiosulfate at double the dosage for chlorine. I do up to 80% water changes in my planted tanks with no apparent ill effect to the fish. Do not use a sodium thiosulfate product in a marine tank, in an African cichlid setup, or in any tank with a high pH if there is chloramine in the tapwater. The ammonia released will likely harm or kill the inhabitants. AMQUEL or PRIME are better candidates. -- Dave Whittaker ac554-at-FreeNet.Carleton.ca





> Subject: Re:water conditioners and chloramine Don Hutton wrote: >>However, I still wonder if the chloramine remover >>will deprive the plants of ammonia. It seems to me that it >>would be difficult to dose just the right amount of >>chloramine remover such that there was no effect >>on the ammonia produced by fish waste etc. The ammonia is not "removed", it is bound up with another chemical which keeps it from being toxic to your fish. (That's why, using some types of test kits your water still tests as if there is a large quantity of ammonia present) I have been assured by John Farrell Kuhns of Kordon that this ammonia is still in a form that nitrifying bacteria can access it, which means that it will not interfere the the establishment of nitrifying bacteria in a new fish tank. I would suspect that if it can be accessed by bacteria, it can also be accessed by plants. In any case, even if it really _did_ lock the ammonia away from the plants, I'm not sure what the options you would have with fish in the tank. Sometimes we need to choose the lesser of two evils. It is certainly possible to supplement nitrogen in a planted tank in forms that are not dangerous to your fish. If you kill all your fish off, however, you'll certainly have more nitrogen available than you need!<g> Karen Randall Aquatic Gardeners Association





> The following info comes from the AmQuel data-sheet (from Kordon). I am in no way advocating the use of AmQuel or vouching for the accuracy of the info contained in their blurb. --- begin quote --- The active ingredient in AmQuel is known chemically as sodium hydroxymethanesulfonate, HOCH SO Na. [nice graphic of molecule] 2 3 The hydroxymethane end of the molecule reacts with ammonia to form a non-toxic, stable water-soluble substance which is acted upon by biological filtration. This reaction effectively removes the toxic ammonia from solution. Even in water of low pH (< 7.0) the above reaction proceeds to completion. This is because even at pHs below 7.0 there is always some "free" ammonia (NH ) and the AmQuel will scavenge it from the water. 3 This is why AmQuel works faster at higher pHs and in saline waters. [ graphic with following equation: ammonia AmQuel aminomethanesulfonate water NH + HOCH SO - ==> H NCH SO - + H O 3 2 3 2 2 3 2 ] The substance formed is stable, and testing has shown that even after weeks in an aquarium without a biological filter, the ammonia is not released back into the water. Also, un-reacted AmQuel is stable, and unless removed with water changes or granular activated carbon it will be available to react with ammonia until is is exhausted in the water to which it was added. This is why AmQuel has proven so useful in shipping fishes. The sulfonate end of the AmQuel molecule reacts with both free available chlorine, known properly as hypochlorites (OCL) and combined-available chlorine (chloramines). In the first instance nothing more than harmless chloride ions (CL) are produced, and in the latter instance chloride ions are formed and the freed ammonia instantly reacts with the hydroxy-methane end of the molecule. --- end quote --- The data sheet goes on to talk about how AmQuel is harmless to plants, fishes, invertebrates, and biological filters but that it will interfere with the workings of methylene blue, acriflavine, and malachite green (in a non-toxic way). They also go on to talk about how Nessler-type test reagents are useless when you use AmQuel (they report false, high ammonia concentrations); you must use Ammonia test kits that use salicylate-type reagents (like Kordon's kit, of course). The number for more info or copies of this data sheet: U.S. 510-782-4058 FAX 510-784-0945 Their address: Novalek, Inc 2242 Davis Ct. Hayward, CA 94545 dan -- Dan Resler Dept. of Mathematical Sciences email: dresler-at-cabell.vcu.edu Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, Virginia, USA 23284-2014


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