Freshwater help for my uncles tank?

[Deadlocked]

I know this is mainly a reef forum (im on here for my reef tank) but my uncle has a fresh water tank (36 gallons) and his Nitrates are really high and wont go down. His ammonia and nitrites are fine, but nitrates are becoming an issue. Hes done multiple massive water changes, hes cleaned the substrate, and he only feeds the tank about once a week. Any idea what might be causing this problem? Thanks in advance.

 

[Sebastiancrab]

Maybe overfeeding or too many fish in the tank for its size? I can't imagine feeding once a week. My guys get hungry! He may be putting in too much food at one time that doesn't get consumed. I have an Eheim automatic feeder that doses small amounts of flake food twice a day. I always keep slightly fewer fish and maintain a regular water change schedule. I also use PolyFilter in my canister filter.

 

[Azedenkae]

I know this is mainly a reef forum (im on here for my reef tank) but my uncle has a fresh water tank (36 gallons) and his Nitrates are really high and wont go down. His ammonia and nitrites are fine, but nitrates are becoming an issue. Hes done multiple massive water changes, hes cleaned the substrate, and he only feeds the tank about once a week. Any idea what might be causing this problem? Thanks in advance.

Nitrate can rise quite a bit in freshwater tanks and could be hard to get rid of completely. Unless he wants to use plants. Maybe he could try a potato?

 

[Sam816]

what kind of filtration is he using? sounds like he has a canister filter that needs cleaning. or a dead fish that got sucked in.

 

[Zach72202]

*Cracks knuckles* I know pretty much 0 about saltwater, but freshwater? I got you.

If you could throw up an image of his tank, that would help get me an idea of what may be happening.

A few questions:

I take it he uses tap water for his tank- by chance is it well water?
Well water can come out of the ground with nitrates, sometimes as high as 20ppm, I have heard of higher.
City water is regulated by the EPA to be less than 10ppm, so there could be some in his city water.

First of all, what is the nitrate level? In freshwater, 10-20ppm is ideal for plant growth.

What kind of substrate is it?
How long has it been running?
Is this a new issue?
is the tank planted? If so- what kind of lighting does he have?
What kind of filtration?
Any recent changes?

A few suggestions for lowering nitrates, depending on stock of the tank.

If it is mainly community fish, you could slap a nicrew light or a finnex light on there and grow some easy plants.
Floating plants like Amazon Frogbit (European frogbit is the illegal one, I checked), Dwarf Water Lettuce, Salvinia Minima, I would avoid duckweed- it can be horrible to get out.

Floating plants are nitrate suckers once they get going.

 

[Azedenkae]

P.S. Just to clarify, I am actually not kidding with the potato. XD They are super easy to grow and also grow very quickly. They just need to start out be partially submerged in water, and once the plantlets develop and grow enough, you can separate the parents from the tuber and toss the tuber while growing the plants.