10 Gallon Tank Need Help with Nitrates please!

[Mhernandez44]

Hello everyone, this is my first time posting here and I’m at a loss for what to do hoping I can get some help for people with more experience then me, so my problem is I’ve been having nitrate problems for a few weeks now everytime I do a regular 15% -20% water change I see not change in my nitrates I was just using the basic paper strips but I just recently got the api mater test kit and did a test and it was maybe a little more that 80ppm so I tested my tap water and it tested at 20ppm so I decided to do a big water change yesterday I did a 50-60% water change last night and instead of using all tap water I used about 1/3 of tap water and then the rest distilled water (I just used the little bit of tap to raise the ph to a good level). And today when I checked my nitrates again they are still high didn’t look as dark to be 80ppm probably closer to 60-70 ppm, I’m at a loss for what else to do someone please help me!

Also I have a 10 gallon tank with 4 guppies and 2 Cory’s it’s a planted tank with driftwood and also some floating plants

 

[PlantedCommunityTank132]

Welcome to the forum. You could add some duckweed. They help a lot when getting rid of nitrates

 

[Mhernandez44]

Welcome to the forum. You could add some duckweed. They help a lot when getting rid of nitrates

I had looked up plants that help with nitrates and I have some minor surface agitation in my tank and they said one of the best ones was Amazon frogbit so I got that as my floating plants

 

[Gudgie]

To really drop your nitrates, you’ll need to do a series of big water changes. Unless you have particularly delicate species of fish, you could regularly do 50% or more. To get down to more acceptable levels, I’d suggest doing at least a 50% change every 1-2 days until you get down to the desired nitrate level.

Once your nitrates have been lowered, you could probably go back to weekly changes - assuming you’re not overstocked or over feeding too much. Floating plants will also help in the long term, as previously suggested.

 

[PlantedCommunityTank132]

I agree with Gudgie. Your tap water nitrate leaves are pretty high already, so that's probably why your nitrate levels are so high. If I were you, I would add more floating plants since it doesn't look like there's a lot of floating plants in there right now

 

[Mhernandez44]

I agree with Gudgie. Your tap water nitrate leaves are pretty high already, so that's probably why your nitrate levels are so high. If I were you, I would add more floating plants since it doesn't look like there's a lot of floating plants in there right now

Duckweed the only floating plant that will help or any floating plants are helpful?

To really drop your nitrates, you’ll need to do a series of big water changes. Unless you have particularly delicate species of fish, you could regularly do 50% or more. To get down to more acceptable levels, I’d suggest doing at least a 50% change every 1-2 days until you get down to the desired nitrate level.

Once your nitrates have been lowered, you could probably go back to weekly changes - assuming you’re not overstocked or over feeding too much. Floating plants will also help in the long term, as previously suggested.

Okay I’ll keep doing the big water changes and see if that helps. Any floating plants help or specific ones like the duckweed suggested above is what I should look into

 

[PlantedCommunityTank132]

All floating plants help, but duckweed is the best if you want to reduce nitrates fast.