Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => New Fishkeepers => Topic started by: pollydoodle on April 14, 2019, 03:15:00 PM
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Hi all.
my nitrate readings have been 2.5 - 5.0 even after a water change, so I decided to test the tap water and found it was more or less the same. Nitrite and ammonia readings are good.
I have bought some extra live plants and plan to get some more as soon as I can go to the shop. Should I be doing anything else?
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No, these levels are nothing to worry about. The permissible level in drinking water is 50ppm. I normally recommend trying to keep them to less than 25ppm, so you don't have anything to worry about here :)
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I agree, 5 ppm is fine. Fish only start to suffer at 20 ppm.
Plants only use nitrate (and nitrite) as a last resort. They prefer ammonia. The reason is simply that nitrite & nitrate have to be converted into ammonia inside the plant, so using ammonia directly takes them less energy.