Stop cleaning your filters every few days. What make & model filter do you have? How long has this tank been setup? What is your ammonia and nitrIte levels?
Bad advice. The fact that nitrates are high means the filter is working, and is not being adversely affected by cleaning. Removing solid waste from a tank, before it breaks down is one way of reducing nitrates.DemasoniLover said:You should stop cleaning your filters so much... your wiping out all the built up bacteria that converts everything!
Your filter may need a little help. If you could afford add another, that would be good. A suggestion might be a AquaClear 70.fishoz said:I have a 55 gallon tank. Its been set up with fish in it for about 4 months. The filter is an Aqua-Tech 30-60 that came with
A suggestion here would be a test kit with reagents and test tubes rather than the strips. There are several brands.fishoz said:the kit I bought at the store. I dont know about the ammonia level because I use Jungle brand 5 tests in 1 test strips which only tell you the nitrate,nitrite,total hardness,total alkalinity,and ph .
I know that. The only real way to get nitrate down is to do water changes. He however didn't say how stocked the tank is and you can never have too much filtration.BillD said:Getting/adding another filter will not lower nitrates. It would be a good idea to have the water tested, or get your own liquid reagant test kit, to be sure that your nitrates are in fact high.
Read up on "Old Tank Syndrome" - what you describe are classic symptoms/case. High nitrates do affect the physiology of fish, just not visably.IrkedCitizen said:It boggles my mind how people freak out over nitrate. There is nothing to show that high nitrates will harm your fish. That isn't to say it is good for them but it isn't going to kill them.
I bought a tank off some guy locally and I ended up buying his other aquarium as well. They probably hadn't seen a water change in like 6-8 months each. He only topped off evaporation water. I took in a sample of the water out of 55g and the nitrate reading was almost 300. The lady at the LFS told me that it wasn't the worst reading they have seen. I still have some of the fish and it has been a year.