Ammonia nitrite and nitrate problem?

Question

Hi everybody, I have a 125 gallon fish tank with a little problem. Every time I do a water change it doesn't change any of my levels. I don't know if this is too bad but ammonia .25 nitrite .25 and nitrate 20. I also have 10 ppm nitrate in my tap water so that's another problem. The tank has been running for about half a year now and on the tank I have a fluval 406 and a top fin 60 as far as filtration. All my fish are medium sized I have 2 oscars 3 blood parrots 1 jack Dempsey 2 tinfoil barbs 3 silver dollars 1 severum and a common pleco.

2014-08-20T13:43:18Z

I also have this nitrate and ammonia pad in my hang on back filter

Anonymous · Answer

How big are your water changes? With my marine tank I do a 10% water change every week and for my freshwater I do 20% every other week. So for a 125g tank a 10% water change weekly would be 12.5 gallons and a 20% bi-weekly change would be 25 gallons. It's always better to do a weekly water change in my opinion because one, you are doing less work and two it is better to make small changes more frequently to a tank rather than a large change less frequently.

Also, though I'm not familiar with all of your fish, I do know that all of those get quite large and I know for a fact oscars are pretty dirty fish. Perhaps you're filter and beneficial bacteria can't keep up with the bio-load in the tank. In which case you are definitely going to need to do more frequent water changes. Not saying you aren't already but just making you aware! Good luck

Amber · Answer

How large of a water change do you do at a time? It is possible that your levels are changing but they are not changing enough to bring them to zero. Any small amounts of ammonia or nitrite will read as 0.25 on your testing chart even if they are not that low.

Ammonia nitrite and nitrate problem?

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