did a water change and nitrates are still up???

ok i did a 3 gallon water change on my 30 gallon (10%) and it looks like it eliminated all my nitrites, and ammonia, but not any of my nitrates!!!! here are my specifice parameters:

pH: 7.8

Nitrates: 40

Nitrites: 0

Ammonia: 0

i will be going to my lfs to day so they can check it also. why havent my nitrates gone down any?

 

Well it probably did reduce your nitrates, perhaps not to a measurable level though. Is the tank you are performing a water change on cycled? If so, and you have measurable levels of ammonia and nitrites, I would be worried about that rather than your nitrate levels. 40 ppm of nitrates isn't a huge deal, but any amount of ammonia or nitrites is cause for concern.

 

How long has it been since you cleaned out your filter media? Build-up in the media can cause nitrates.

 

+1 to what bigdaddyreefer said. That small of a WC won't dilute your nitrates very much, especially if your tank is creating more at a fast rate.

Besides the Penguin, do you have any powerheads for water movement? The filter cartridge can be more of a problem than it's worth if it's full of food pieces. That alone can be a nitrate problem.

 

Beat me while I was typing.

 

there are no ammonia or nitrites thanks goodness.i have a week or two left before i need to replace my filter media. how much of a water change should i do so i can reduce nitrates??

 

That's hard to say. I have a large FOWLR system and my nitrates are between 20-30. With your setup, I would look more in the area of uneaten food in the filter media, under rocks not rinsing frozen foods like mysis. Personally, I ran a Penguin 350 on my 40 breeder when I started it up, but I didn't use any filter pads. It was just for flow and the biowheels.

 

Forgot to answer your question. If you change 1/2 of your water, you should reduce your nitrates by half. I wouldn't change more than half of the tanks water at a time, though. A steady rate per week is a safer way to do it. I would be more concerned about why you had ammonia and nitrite readings.

 

K+ to that.

 

i had a dwarf lionfish in there (my main mistake) that lead to my high readings.