New To Fish Keeping, Can Anyone Help Me With Questions?

Well if your tap water has that high of a nitrate level there are a few things you can do. You could switch to bottled water. Use Purigen instead of carbon because it will remove nitrates from the water (at least I think it Purigen...someone correct me if I'm wrong). And lastly...while I hate to say it, many fish can tolerate a high nitrate level, they just can't tolerate big nitrate swings, so you could just try to see if you can make it work with your tap water.

I'm sure there are other members with high nitrate levels in their tap water, hopefully some of them will chime in.

 

Well if your tap water has that high of a nitrate level there are a few things you can do. You could switch to bottled water. Use Purigen instead of carbon because it will remove nitrates from the water (at least I think it Purigen...someone correct me if I'm wrong). And lastly...while I hate to say it, many fish can tolerate a high nitrate level, they just can't tolerate big nitrate swings, so you could just try to see if you can make it work with your tap water.

I'm sure there are other members with high nitrate levels in their tap water, hopefully some of them will chime in.

What is purigen? I think I'll do a test on bottled water to see nitrates levels as well as water used to fill up gallons at grocery stores.. and may e use that kind of it's low levels?

 

Purigen is a carbon type of product which removes stuff from the water including nitrates. I've never used it myself, but many members have and they seem to really love the stuff.

 

Yes your tank will clear up, if u did not clean the gravel it might take longer, but leave ur tank run after it’s cleared to build up good bacteria.

The water on the lid is normal, if you did not have a lid the water would go into the air and you would have to add water often, the lid also prevents fish from jumping out of the tank.