Nitrate poisoning questions

I have had my discus for a month now, and I'm assuming my nitrates have been a problem for 2 weeks. I had a bad nitrate test I think....or else it didn't work right...not entirely sure, but I somehow missed it.

I have included a prefilter, and did a 60% water change. I normally do daily 40-50% water changes and syphon up extra bits of food. My assumption is they were letting too much get sucked up. I'm taking appropriate precautions now obviously with the prefilter and making sure I check the floss in the filter daily to see if it needs rinsed out.

So the question prevails...has the 2 or 3 weeks of nitrate poisoning done serious damage?

They are all very healthy, no loss of slimecoat, hole in the head or cloudy eye or anything. The ammonia and nitrites are 0...but the nitrates were enormously high. Please advise me of something I could read up on (I went to University for Animal Science...so I like a good scientific read). Thanks, Steph

Hi Steph, high nitrates will make them very skittish, and I believe if high enough, will kill them. Water change, water change, water change... daily until the nitrates are very very low. Add salt also, 2 tbsp/ 10 gals.

Barb

Thanks Barb. For some reason I thought salt increases pH...but does it affect nitrates too?

Dumb thought...would the high chloramine levels in my water possibly be a contribution to these nitrates? I had a couple losses due to not adding the proper water conditioner when I moved to this town....and I know all conditioners aren't created equal. Is there something I need to know about how chloramine is broken down...possibly it's not being totally removed? Just a thought, because I know the chloramine level is extremely high in this town's water.

I'll try doing two water changes a day till I can get it under control. Thanks, Steph

Chloramine breaks down into NH3 (Ammonia) and Chlorine, it really doesn't have much to do with NO3 (Nitrate) at that point. I say this because I'm curious to know why you think you have VERY high NO3? How high? I can't imagine a tank this young and with you doing that many water changes experiencing VERY high NO3 is the reason I ask. Also NO3 test kits are notorious for being wrong.

To answer your question, both Amquel and Prime will lock up the NH3 component of Chloramine and are what most use on this site. (Actually they will lock all Nitrogen molecules (NH3/NH4, NO2, NO3) Most use Prime because it's cheaper.

Ammonia will contribute to nitrate even if bound up by Prime or one of the other binders. All of them leave it bio-available to the nitrifying bacteria, while protecting the fish from it.

Now having said that, the amount of ammonia released from breaking the chloramine is so small that it will have little affect on any level.

Test your tap water...it's quite common in rural areas for there to be ambient levels of NO3 in the water....you just maybe adding it with the water changes.

NO3 is not very toxic and is not readily taken up by the fish...where as NO2 is taken up by the fish quite easily and is very toxic. Salt will make no difference with NO3 that I've ever seen...........Fish naturally take up chloride via an ion pump in thier gills...that pump will also take up NO2 just as easily. By adding salt to the system we up the available chloride ions and outcompete the nitrite ones....thus protecting the fish from BBD.

G

K...note to self...never read things like this first thing in the morning, my head is spinning!

I did two nitrate tests, before and after water change. Before was 90, after was slightly lower.

My only confusion is how chloramine is broken down...as I know if untreated can release deadly high levels of ammonia and kill the fish INSTANTLY! (Yes I saw this happen once, and I was mortified....$500 fish dead in 10 minutes in front of my eyes...not a pleasant sight to watch!) When you treat with water treatment...does it somehow bind the agent? Cause I know if you read the bottles closer if you have chloramine you have to treat at about 4 times the level to just chlorine...and some products actually say you have to still add something else. :confused: Right now I'm using Aqua Pharmaceuticals.

I'll keep you posted on these nitrate levels! Thanks for the help!

:) water chemistry on a Sunday morning...it'll get anyone.

Most binding products break the chlorine/ammonia bound 1st and then bind up the NH3....one of the molecule nuetralizes the chlorine and the other end attaches itself to the ammonia

http://www.novalek.com/kpd58.htm


Chlorine is deadly, so is chloramine but , There's not a whole lot of ammonia released when the bond is broken so on small water changes any released NH3 will be oxidized away pretty fast by the nitrifiers....large water changes are another story

Here's a post by Dr Roddy Conrad pHD in chemistry

Quote:

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The normal way to remove iron is aeration to precipitate the iron.

I honestly don't know whether sodium thiosulfate or PP does anything to the iron, but will look around in the chemical library at work and do a bit of surfing here and there to see if I can figure out a technically correct answer to that question.

No, sodium thiosulfate does not remove the ammonia in chloramine.

But let's do some order of magnitude calculations here.

The EPA standards for drinking water allows chloramines for water disinfection to a maximum value of 4 ppm measured as chlorine.

The normal value of chloramine in the water for a normal town is less than 0.5 ppm when measured as chlorine.

Let's take 0.5 ppm as an actual value for calculation, and assume a very large water instant exchange of 20%.

The amount of chloramine in the 20% water change would then be 0.2 times 0.5 ppm or 0.1 ppm.

The atomic weight of chlorine is 35.5, the molecular weight of ammonia is 17. So the amount of ammonia liberated by adding an instant 20% water change of a high level of chloramine is 17/35 times 0.1 ppm or 0.05 ppm. That is well below the detection limit of ammonia, and should be immediately biotreated anyway.

So there is no concern about the ammonia from the chloramine unless the water exchange is huge, the chloramine is several times normal, and there is no effective biofilter. Otherwise, you are wasting your money on those expensive dechlorinators that bind ammonia.
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Steph, as someone mentioned, check your source water as it could be part of your nitrate problem. I've never used the aqua pharmaceutical dechlorinator, but find it strange that a product would have one dosage for chlorinated water and another chloramine(inated) water :confused: Go with a product that is specifically geared towards chloramines because that will do both at the same dosage. I prefer Prime but Amquel+ will also do the trick - don't think regular Amquel works on chloramines.

Another issue that effects what happens when the chlorine/ammonia bond is broken is ph. If your ph is below 7 the ammonia is broken into a non toxic form, if above 7 it's instantly toxic.

Only problem I see with the quote Graham inserted is the fact that many of us do substantially more than 20% WCs, and if you do you're probably better off aging the water and adding your Prime to the aging tank before you pump it into your aquarium. Also, if you live in an Urban area, it's not uncommon for the municipality to dose their system with significantly higher concentrations of chlorine and/or chloramines if a pipe breaks or bacteria starts exceeding the accepted limits... in these cases, the amount of ammonia released when the bond is broken will be significantly higher and overpower your biofilter and wreck havock on your fish if you haven't added enough product (prime / amquel+) to counteract the increased levels of chloramines.

Jim

Thanks guys, much appreciated. I'm going to do some testing here and see what it is from the tap...try aging, etc.

My pH is about 8.0 and I don't fuss with it, as the discus came from Canada Discus, and their pH is 7.6, so I'm not too concerned about that.

The fact that the pH has an effect on the toxicity of certain things in the water is a concern...so I'll play around with things and see what works best. Thanks so much. All this is a wonderful help and I'm sure the older guys will be appreciative as well!