General Care Discussion :: Water Questions - Nitrate

[sollord]

Based on the water test I did I've got low ph, low kh, no chlorine, very hard water, no nitrite and nitrate through the roof. I also ran a test on my tap water it's neutral ph,moderate KH, no chlorine (city water with no chlorine?!?), Hard Water, Caution on the Nitrite and no Nitrate.

I just did an almost full water change (bout 1" of water on top of less then an 1" of sand in a 65gal tank) Saturday and I cleaned the filters and replaced the carbon and some of the pads. Any clues on how to fix this? I'm gonna pull all the sand out tomorrow and see fit that drops the nitrate down... but other ideas would be nice

Totally unrelated problem... How can I get my turtle to stop messing with my filter? He keeps pulling the inlet around and had managed to turn the out around 120 degrees so it blow right into the corner and moves away from the wall -.-

[octpusgirl8]

Nitrate is the end product of the nitrification cycle that gets rid of ammonia. It can build up to pretty high levels in tank water if you don't change it regularly. It can also be present in tap water, but that doesn't seem to be it in your case. It can take a good series of water changes to get the level down where you want it to be. Be careful about doing such an extreme water change, changing more than half the water at once puts you at risk of disrupting the bacteria in your biological filter. If i were you i'd do a 1/3 water change every day for a little while and then retest.

About your mischevious turtle, not much you can do there. You can work on securing it better, maybe find a big rock that you can use to block it, but they just like to mess with things.

[TheComputerGremlin]

Chlorine isn't a problem in turtle tanks or water supplies, it evaporates from the water. So it's possible that the water you tested from your tap has already evaporated the chlorine. However, chloramines are dissolved in the water, and that's why we treat the water with a dechlorinator. I don't know if your test would test for both of those.

I agree, never do an extreme water change unless it's needed. Just change out 1/4 to 1/3 of the water each day or two and test in a few weeks. High nitrates won't hurt your turtle for a few days, but killing your bacteria will leave you with a cloudy tank for a month.

As for your turtle, honestly, if he wants them in a certain place, sometimes it's better to just secure them where he's placed them and give up. Every time I rearrange my tank, the turtle changes it, so I've given in.

[sollord]

Well my tanks clear as ever though I do have two filters one of which is running pure bio and wasn't changed outside of large partial filter getting a quick wash. Either way I'll just do some partial changes see if it helps before I go to the bother of pulling all the sand

[SpotsMama]

Some frisky turtles have pulled the guard off the bottom of the intake pipe of a filter. This can be dangerous if the turtle gets stuck on the intake pipe because the suction can be very strong and trap the turtle underwater. In fact, turtles have drowned or been injured this way. I'd strongly recommend super glueing the guard to the intake pipe to prevent this. Also, you can super glue sections of the pipe together if your turtle pulls them apart. This might make the whole intake setup more stable.