i don't know about you but I've always had trouble with nitrates in my aquarium like
in the beginning i had way too much and then now i have too little like what's going on
hi my name is Irene with Girl Talks Fish, here with practical tips for busy fish
keepers like you and if you have heard of the aquarium nitrogen cycle link over here
you know that fish poop generates toxic ammonia which turns into toxic nitrite
which then turns into less toxic nitrate like no one on the internet seems to be able to agree
how much nitrate is considered lethal to fish some people say oh you know don't go above 10 or 20 ppm
nitrate some people say 50 ppm some people say zero because the less is the best um and i think
the reason why there is so much confusion about this is because the lack of research on it like
researchers do studies on where the money is and the money is in agricultural fisheries that raise
up fish for food and even there the numbers seem to really vary from species to species
much less nobody is going to do a study like that for aquarium fish that costs like a few dollars
in comparison so i did a little bit of digging i was able to find one paper that studied guppy fry
so guppy babies and the lethal level of nitrate was 200 ppm sorry ppm is parts per million and
that means for me personally at least i try to aim for either 75 ppm or 80 ppm nitrate if i see that
level, I'm definitely going to do something about it back when i was a beginner i made the common
mistake of having it too many fish my aquariums meaning they were eating a lot they were pooping
a lot and that produced a lot of nitrate so every time that nitrate would creep higher and higher
i mean the fastest way to remove nitrate is to physically remove it so you basically i would do
a giant water change physically remove the old dirty nitrate filled water and then replace it
with clean tap water however you guys know me I'm busy I'm lazy and i don't like having to do
50% water changes every single week it takes so much time but then i discovered the magic of
live aquarium plants now the reason why i didn't start them earlier was just because as a beginner
i was really afraid like i was still learning how not to kill fish and then having to take care of
another kind of living thing plants just was overwhelming but eventually i got to the point
where i was comfortable enough to try them and amazing basically the plants consume all of those
toxic nitrogen compounds and use them to produce new leaves and roots i got to the
point where i had so many plants in my aquarium that i basically always had zero ppm and nitrate
all the time which sounds great because that means i don't have to do water changes right
except now i had a whole crop of other problems start to appear like lots of algae growth and
now my plants are dying what's going on turns out the plants do need nitrogen to grow like it is a
basic building block and if you don't provide it the plants start losing their leaves and the tank
gets all out of balance and if you don't know what that means i have a whole tutorial over here on
what it means to balance a planted aquarium but in short what i ended up doing was lowering the
amount of lighting period i gave to the plants which means they didn't grow as fast if they don't
grow as fast they don't eat as much nitrate so how do you make sure you have enough nitrate to feed
your plants well i highly recommend you get some kind of all-in-one aquarium plant fertilizer that
basically contains all the necessary nutrients and minerals that your plants need and you don't
have to think about it now i personally use the aquarium co-op easy green all-in-one fertilizer
because full disclosure i work for them so i get an employee discount but i also like the fact that
it has a lot of the major macro nutrients that plants eat a lot of which is nitrogen or nitrate
phosphate and potassium so every week or two i do a quick and dirty test with these kind of test
strips that tell me how much nitrate i have in the aquarium and then according to the easy green
instructions i should dose up to 50 ppm nitrate for my aquariums i personally try to balance my
lighting fish load plant load etc so that i measure about 10 to 25 ppm nitrate each week
then i can dose the easy green up to 50 ppm and then i know that my plants have their fortified
breakfast they've got all their necessary macro and micronutrients they need so essentially the
nitrate test is a fast and easy way to guesstimate how much food my plants need
to be fed bottom line if your aquarium only has fish and invertebrates in it no fish than it is
find have 0 ppm nitrate however if you are keeping a planted aquarium of some sort the plants do need
some kind of nitrogen source now i shared the easy green fertilizer that i use which they recommend
50 ppm nitrate however if you are using some other type of fertilization method or maybe you're
relying more on nutrient-rich substrates to feed your plants this number may not be right for you
so do your research I'm just sharing what i personally do and what's worked for me in the past
now i will admit easy green is not the only fertilizer i use but i didn't want to cover
in this video because this one's mostly focused on nitrate so if you're interested in part three of
my water chemistry series we're going to talk about plant nutrients and i will post it here
once it releases take time to enjoy your aquariums and I'll see in the next video