The Puffer Forum

A guy on Reef Lounge Forums just told me that nitrates aren't toxic in marine aquariums. That's not the reason you do water changes. You do waterchanges to remove "other" toxic substances. So, what's the verdict?

Kim

Nitrate is toxic everywhere, depending on concentration and the target organisms. Some fish are quite sensitive, others much less so. Inverts are on the whole more sensitive than vertebrates, but with the same variablility in sensitivity from species to species and from family to family. Nitrate is also a nutrient for algae, assisted by other pollutants which are less easy to measure.

We do use nitrate as an easily tested indicator of general pollution in a tank, not just for itself.

Let's just say that the guy who said that is mistaken, in part, because nitrate is a potenial toxin (concentration again), but correct in that it is used as indictor of general pollution in FO, whether FW, BW, or SW. In reefs, and in planted FW, it may not provide an accurate scale of pollution build-up.

Nitrates are still just as bad, if not worse in a marine aquarium then in a freshwater. Marine creatures are even more sensitive to things like that then freshwater. Yes, water changes do remove "other toxins", but its still just as important to remove nitrates.

when it comes down to it, nitrates are just a broken down form of ammonia, just a whole lot less toxic.


Ammonia gets eaten by a bacteria, and the waste from that bacteria is nitrIte, wich is less toxic then ammonia, but still deadly in even minute quantitys. Then another bacteria eats the nitrIte, and the waste from that bacteria is NitrAte, which is much less toxic then nitrIte, but is still toxic in amounts greater then roughly 30-40 ppm. The only way to remove nitrates from your aquarium is through water changes, and if you dont do water changes, the nitrates will gradually build up to massive amounts.

A preferable NitrAte level in a marine aquarium is <20ppm.

-John

dang it, RTR beat me to the post!!! thought i had that one.


-John

The Fisherman wrote: The only way to remove nitrates from your aquarium is through water changes

Not quite the only way, but certainly a great way to do so.


There are many dissolved pollutants we can not or do not test for, and water changing helps keep all of those in check, including nitrate.

Yeah, but Mr. Refugium (aka RTR) will let that one slide by for now...