Thread: Nitrate and nitrite levels

Your nitrate sounds right but are you sure about your nitrite reading?

Did you mean to say 0.8?

You're still in the middle of new pond syndrome and will probably be battling it for months. It took my pond over 18 months until NPS resolved itself on my pond. Although being unheated it took longer than if I were heated.

The bacteria to break down ammonia get established pretty quick but the ones to break down the nitrite are well known for taking a long time to get established.

Other than heating the water (to speed up the process) the only option available to you is to keep checking as you are and keep up the water changes. You'll get there... Eventually.

Although if the fish are newly added, there is a good chance they have parasites as well.


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If nitrite is 8 I would stop feeding and immediately do a large water change.

If it remains at that level you'll be at risk of losing fish very quickly.

I would hold off feeding for a couple of weeks. Them going without food in these temps will not be the end of the world for the fish, but if you keep feeding it will keep the nitrite levels high and could well result in fish deaths. So it's just not worth feeding them for now until you can get the nitrite down to a safe level.

One option available to you is salt. Salt can protect the fish from nitrite. But be warned, it takes a lot of subsequent water changes to dilute the salt out. Which actually won't be such a bad thing as the nitrite will likely remain persistently high for months. But the only down side is if you need to treat for parasites, some treatments can't be used with salt. So you need to weigh up the pros and cons.

If you do want to use salt then I suggest dosing at a rate of 0.6% and use PDV Salt.

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If you also need to treat any bacterial issues acriflavine can be used with salt. In fact salt and acriflavine compliment each other quite well in treating fish (I've used it before when treating bacterial infections).

Not sure if it'll work on fungal issues though.

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1 litre of water weighs 1kg.

So 0.006 (which is 0.6% in decimal format) x 15,000kgs = 90kgs of salt.

They normally come in 25kg sacks. Last time I bought them they were about £13 a sack. Not sure on prices now.

If you are not sure on your exact volume, then it may be wise to underdose. Just in case you have mis calculated your pond volume.

I say this especially as you can't go over 0.9%, otherwise you could end up killing the fish. And even if it is only 0.4% salinity, that should still serve it's purpose.



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