Ammonia and Nitrite Low Nitrate High

[MrsPuffAZ]

Hello,

I'm brand new to the forum and I have had my puffer for about 6 months. She lives in a 29 gallon brackish tank with 3 fiddler crabs.

I have a bit of a mystery..(in my mind anyway) with the Nitrate levels.
The ammonia is nearly zero
The Nitrite is zero
The Nitrate is high, I can check the number tonight but bright pink on the water test stick and is listed as "Stressful" but not " Dangerous".

She is a sloppy eater but the Fiddler Crabs seem to clean up after her well. She eats ramshorn snails, blood worms as well as frozen muscles. She's grown quite a bit so I don't worry she is stressed, her tummy is white and she swims all day long. The tank current is pretty strong.

I am however stressed about the Nitrate levels. I do 50 % water changes weekly/biweekly depending on the other levels as the Nitrate just seems to stay the same. Is it just not enough water changes?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

[J-P]

Welcome to the forum!

I have the same problem. My Nitrates are almost always in the high range.

Usually it is from over feeding but could be other causes.

There are various remidies but water changes (larger) or more frequent are usually recomended.

Others will chime in and maybe give you a walk through. Liquid test kits are also far more accurate than test strip BTW.

[Brandon8521]

I would suggest the api liquid test kit... but it might be safe to say check your tap water to see if it has a high nitrate to start with.

[Iliveinazoo]

Welcome! I have a couple of comments:
Ammonia should be zero. How much do you feed daily?
What species of puffer?
What is the nitrate level of your tap water?
Can the fiddlers get out of the tank because they'll drown otherwise? My bet is that your puffer will eat the fiddlers eventually.
Is there any other inhabitants other than the puffer and the fiddlies?

[MrsPuffAZ]

I just found out from the city that Chandler's water average Nitrate levels are 5.0 ppm with highs at 9.0ppm .. Would that contribute to my problem significantly? I apologize my stick testers have kept me ignorant about the correct level numbers I just know the colors.

Thanks for the advice about the liquid test kit. I looked at one the other day and I wasn't too sure if they would be beneficial. I will pick one up tonight.

I feed Mrs Puff as much as she wants to eat daily... She does get really REALLY fat. It is about the equivalent of half a frozen cube of fishfood. I think they are 1cm by 1 cm here. She's a GSP about 2.5 inches. I thought the crabs would clean up any food left over from overfeeding so I didn't worry about it too much. Maybe this is another concern?

The fidders can get out of the tank to get air, I have a branch that extends upward and splits into several others and leans onto one of those aquatic shelves above water so they can hang out if they like. I learned about fiddlers the hard way after "saving them from walmart" and having them escape into my filters.

They are the only inhabitants of the tank.

[Brandon8521]

library/feeding/feeding-your-puffers/

library/puffers-in-focus/an-introductio ... d-puffers/

These are some good articles to read up on.

[Flutter]

Not really... Many people in the UK have 40+ppm right from the tap. Is there any way there could be something rotting in the tank or filter somewhere? Do you vacuum your gravel well or stir you sand?

[MrsPuffAZ]

Ok, so I may have forgotten an important detail.

My tank was for the fiddler crabs prior to getting the puffer. Therefore it does not have the standard filtration system or substrate. It has sand and gravel.



The green portion is the under-gravel filter customized for under sand filtration system. It basically is a normal under-gravel system with very fine aquatic (plastic) mesh sewn and silicone glued to it so that the sand cannot pass through. It has been through extensive testing and works great for keeping the sand at bay, but maybe there isn't enough bacteria underneath to handle the Puff?

On the other side the large box is a square colander with very large and medium sized holes on all sides also lined with aquatic mesh (sewn and glued) to prevent sand from entering it. The pink square is a 50/gal per hour pond pump.


The brown is my fiddler crab tree and the purple square is their above water aquatic shelf.

The orange is substrate.

Blue is the water level.

I do stir my sand and gravel and at no point is the substrate deeper than 1-2 inches.
Thinking on it it is probably not enough filtration for Mrs Puff ?

[RTR]

How do you clean the fine mesh?

Are you vacuuming the tank routinely (weekly)?

What percentage of the water is changed weekly?

When you get a liquid-based test kit we can offer better advice. but in the meantime, you are definitely overfeeding the puffer. They should be fed to a lightly rounded belly only. Any more will in part be passed out undigested, contributing to tank pollution. Additionally, they should be fasted at least one day per week. Over-feeding shortens their lives quite a lot.

And yes, the relatively low levels of nitrate in the source water will add to the totals in your tank, so they are part of what you are seeing.

HTH

[Pufferpunk]

1st of all:

I was thinking, if you aren't rinsing that cubed food in a brine shrimp net, then all that "juice" it's packed in may be adding nitrate to your tank (in addition to all the other advice offered above).

[MrsPuffAZ]

I always do close to 50% water changes and I do vacuum the gravel. I never clean the mesh as it is attached to the bottom of the top of the under gravel filter.

Thank you so much to everyone who has responded. I feed Mrs Puff last night but not too much like before.

I got my API liquid test kit and here are the results:

Chandler water:
Nitrate : 3 ppm


Mrs Puff H2o
Nitrate 30 ppm
Nitrite 0
Alkalinity 300+ ppm
pH 8.4

I also tested for Ammonia
0.3 ppm

I wonder is there something I can do in the meantime to help Mrs Puff until I get the Nitrate under control? I am going to look at some water Sprite today to see if the addition of plants will help.

[J-P]

did something die in the tank? Or food that wasn't eaten decaying?

[Pufferpunk]

My guess is that UGF. I would pull out that plate & use a HOB filter instead.

[Nick]

I've found regular flow UGF to do a great job on ammonia/nitrite, but be nearly as bad as a wet/dry on nitrate, with the additional problem of sediment buildup under the plate. If you don't want to disrupt the bacteria in it, run it reverse flow and add an HOB, the combo gives very good physical waste removal AND great biological filtration surface.

[MrsPuffAZ]

Thanks again for all the advice! This forum is awesome!!!

I found 2 empty Ramshorn snail shells in the tank and removed them just in case Mrs Puff didn't remove the entire snail and it's rotting.

I read online that prior to getting a canister filter/powerhead I may want to buy a dry/wet vac and attach it to the UGF tube to remove any debris below.
Does this sound like a terrible idea? Sounds like a great one to me!

I only have experience using an air stone. Can anyone point me to the type or model of canister or powerhead that I would want to use for a RUGF?

Thanks a million!