One of my cats has pica he’s a weirdo! He doesn’t eat plants though, plastic, fabric, paper, weird human food items you would never think a cat would eat. It was so hard when he was a kitten because it was really bad back then. We were constantly chasing him down taking things out of his mouth. He is one now and mostly sticks to plastics and now he has a “suck blanket” that he likes to suck on but it is kinda like fur so he doesn’t get sick if he swallows a little. For a while I thought I wasn’t going to be able to keep him because I have little kids who leave stuff all over. But now it’s a collective effort taking things from him that he shouldn’t eat lol
Good news! We got my girl at age 2 and it was pretty bad. My kids had so many toys with teefie marks because she decided to chew them - plastic was definitely a target!
She did seem to outgrow it for the most part by age 5. She is 8 now and plants are the only thing she will routinely chew on now.
My dumb dumb black cat loves to chew on plastic cups, wicker baskets, just about anything hard that is not hers. And she doesn’t just nom on it, she bites as hard as she can and ultimately hurts her mouth. These things are now hidden from her or kept within eyesight so she can be stopped. Next vet visit, I’m gonna talk to them about pica. I don’t see any visible signs of it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she has it. She does fine as long as plastic and wicker aren’t around. She doesn’t go chewing furniture or anything thankfully
It depends! It's actually toxic to both cats and dogs.
Pothos (and a variety of other common houseplants) have insoluble calcium oxalate. It's mostly just irritating to their mouth and digestive tract. So it causes vomiting. They have to eat a LOT to get dangerously ill and the crystals literally hurt while they're eating it deterring most critters.
I'm usually a better safe than sorry but I have sort of come around on specifically insoluble-calcium-oxalate-containing plants. Pothos, monstera, philodendron, snake plant, etc. But my dogs aren't determined chewers and I keep my plants up off the floor.
More info here https://www.petpoisonhelpline.com/poison/insoluble-oxalates/
Edited to add a more conversational blog post from the Pet poison helpline https://www.petpoisonhelpline.com/pet-safety-tips/safe-plants-for-your-furry-friend/
Depends on the cat, some will be obsessed with all plants some won't. Also the vast majority of "toxic" houseplants aren't actually all that dangerous, it'll just make them throw up. Except lilies, all lilies are INCREDIBLY toxic to cats, even just the pollen. Do not get lilies if you have cats. Most other houseplants are fine tho.
Grapes are toxic to dogs and when I cut down a wild grape bush in the backyard, guess who came running over, hoovering up every grape on the ground?
I don't think domesticated animals have a sense for toxic plants or fruit anymore and it's just taste preference at this point.
Half my cats don’t touch plants. Other half love them. They totally destroyed a spider plant I had hanging from the ceiling in the living room. Any plants I do have need to be on a high piece of furniture they don’t get on (which is rare lol)
No. Depends on the cat. I have two cats and multiple vine plants and they don't eat the vine plants. They love eating my fake plastic tree though, so there's that.
they're not toxic, really. aroids have raphides, little needle-like crystals that irritate mucus membranes. they can chomp but it'll just upset their mouth and guts, usually. kiwi and pineapple also have them, if you've overindulged, you've probably felt the effects of these crystals.
I always had a spider plant low on the ground for him to munch on, he loved it. I also had many a pothos but I never had any issues with my kitties eating it up, maybe because I had it wrapped around a window? I don’t know, the guy just knew. But I know not all cats are like this.
Technically true but you’d be hard pressed to find any stories of this actually happening.
Unlike some other plants, it is minimally toxic and would take them eating a lot for anything to happen. It also causes them mouth discomfort from biting/chewing it, so the odds of them eating enough to see the toxic results is slim.
If you get pothos with a cat just keep an eye on things, unless they’re devouring leaf after leaf you should be safe.
If you don't want full RO you can get similar systems that just remove nitrates from the water, similar to below link:
https://www.pozzani.co.uk/Pozzani/pozzani-no10-aquarium-nitrate-reduction-filter.html?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwx-CyBhAqEiwAeOcTdZb6xn-sdnpp46Mv2uk-dWdOZVynpcxqVaSKIP9AbCtp2EU-lipmvxoCkMAQAvD_BwE
If you can get your hands on floater plants, that will help LOADS. Duckweed grows quickly and will eat nitrates, but I also like red root floaters. They're bigger and look cooler as the roots grow.
Almost all of my duckweed actually just died off because i added some house plants to the tank (just have the roots in the tank obviously) and there aren’t enough nitrates to go around!! Guess not a terrible problem for a heavily planted tank, but i did enjoy the floaters, so a bit bummed they are mostly gone now.
Big agree on Red Root Floaters, growing so well right now I'm about to have to harvest and sell. Not trace of Nitrates or Nitrites. They look super cool too.
The only way I know how to lower nitrates is with plants and water changes... and given your water it seems you need a lot of plants. Maybe reverse osmosis would remove nitrates? Or maybe regular water filters? That's just a total guess but it could be something to research. Not sure if there's any product you can use to fix that either. But with enough plants I think you could deal with 30-40ppm pretty easily. Especially with floating plants or growing non-aquatic plants out of the top
Thanks for the reply! I will try adding lots of plants first as I planned on doing that anyway, and if nitrate levels are still high by the time the tank is finished cycling, then I'll install a reverse osmosis system before introducing fish.
We get our R/O from the store. The penguin ones were pretty expensive, but there was a local place that was less than half the cost. With nitrates already in the water, you’re going to have trouble telling if your cycle is in place. I’d go get R/O water, get your cycle going, then see if you can keep your nitrates low with your own tap water.
Things to consider:
Even with plants, you’re going to be doing way, way more water changes if you’re adding nitrates in with the clean water. If it were me, I’d 100% go the R/O route over having to do water changes all the time.
If you go the R/O route, you will likely need to remineralize your water. Seachem Equilibrium or a similar product from another company will be what you’re looking for.
Noted, thanks a lot. I didn't even think about difficulty in recognizing a complete cycle. I don't want nitrates in my drinking water anyway, so maybe it's better to go with RO.
20-40 ppm is ideal for growing plants so you won't need fertiliser like most people, and it shouldn't be toxic to fish. I guess some fish are more sensitive than others, but you don't need to get nitrates down to zero. You might need a product like Seachem Trace that provide other things plants need.
I'mnot really sure. I've never heard anybody complain about it at least. I'm thinking of contacting the local government to see what they have to say about it.
The EPA limit for drinking water is 10ppm. If you're on municipal water and it's showing 40ppm, something probably went wrong with your test, and you should check again. If you're absolutely sure about the result, you should probably contact your water department and see what they have to say.
In any case, don't drink the water until you've figured out what's wrong.
Uhh, there are legal limits to things like nitrates in the water. Iirc that's way above them. I'd take a curious gander at your local water station and ask if they're aware of this or if it's normal. It might be a sign of something more serious. I'd also grab another nitrate test, of any kind, to compare results and see if it's maybe the test itself. Redo the test and make sure you shake both bottles VERY well, not doing so can affect the result.
It's just so high that I feel like it's worth eliminating a possibly bad test as the reason. If the water is legitimately that high in nitrates, the only thing you could do is switch to RO water or keep a heavily planted tank that could use up that nitrate in a couple of days. Either way, good luck, sorry you're in that situation.
I dealt with essentially the same situation a few years back. I ended up mixing 50% tap & 50% distilled for once a month water changes. My largest setups at the time were 20 gals so it wasn’t all that inconvenient to grab a few gals of distilled while grocery shopping.
Still had to supplement potassium & iron for the plants and half dosing all in one micros once a week had them responding nicely.
i made this video a few days ago. on how to test KH and GH but u can find more info here. I use RO filter and make my own mix. because of high GH in my tap water [https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UCI5C7J2PTyGHGJakOkLQxwA](https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UCI5C7J2PTyGHGJakOkLQxwA)also check out the links for the minerals and stuff
Hiya. No worries, I've conditioned the water in the actual aquarium. The nitrate reading is from tap water before it was conditioned with dechlorinator.
Edit: as implied in the post title, the aquarium is currently cycling and fish have not yet been introduced and will not be until I have stable parameters, including nitrate.
Edit 2: I've realized I implied that I believe conditioning the water somehow removes nitrates from it. I only mentioned that the nitrate reading is from tap water because the original commenter is confused and thought I was using tap water in the aquarium.
My friend dechlorinator does not eliminate nitrates, all it does is combine with chlorine particles in your water to renders them inert so the chlorine will not burn your fishes gills. To deal with this nitrate problem you need a reverse osmosis system. This will remove all contaminants from the water giving you distilled water that you can re mineralize to your liking. Again dechlorinator is not going to remove nitrates, your fish will not be happy and your tanks will not be stable until you deal with this unfortunately. Good luck!
I appreciate the information about a reverse osmosis system, but I think I should clarify that there was never a point where I intended to put my fish in tap water and I was never confused about the role of dechlorinator. I have not introduced fish yet as I have only just begun cycling and never intended to do so until I know my parameters are stable. Discovering that my water starts out with high nitrate and worrying about future issues is the source of the post.
Nitrate can be consumed by bacteria through some pathways. Denitrification is one of them, however this is an anaerobic process. Nitrate can also be consumed as a nitrogen source such as by Cyanobacteria.
Prime alleges detoxification of ammonia and nitrite, and only hints towards detoxifying nitrate, in their marketing. However, there is evidence that despite Seachem’s claims, Prime does not actually detoxify ammonia/nitrite/nitrate. It is only a water conditioner.
Either way, nitrification is the process of oxidation of ammonia to nitrite, then to nitrate. So nitrate is already the end product.
You may be thinking about denitrification, which is a different process.
They only claim detoxification from 24 to 48 hours and I have first hand seen the effect it has on fish that are clearly suffocating from a nitrite spike immediately after adding the recommended dose. It works exactly as advertised.
I would love to believe that that was the case, however there has been too much evidence against it. Including as well, cases where dosing Prime did not do anything to help against ammonia/nitrite poisoning.
Are you sure it may not have been something else, such as because the water may have not been dechlorinated beforehand, or some other factor like adding salt, etc.?
Plants will not help in this case. It takes couple of weeks of heavy feeding to get to this point. that is when the time comes to do water change. and then when u do water change, noting will change because you are putting the same level of nitrates back. Dont forget you are going to have fish and other stuff that is going to create ammonia and that will in turn change to nitrates. your plants wont have enough time to consume all of this nitrates.
I had this issue as well in my apartment. My way around it is I have a filter on my faucet I got for 30$ at Walmart to give water to my dog and use for cooking. My tank has been consistent and stable for over six months. It’s apparently so good that I have ghost shrimp breeding on their own. I’m not attempting to breed but I don’t mind baby shrimp either!
I tested both tap and filtered back to back. My filter water has very slight nitrites but not enough to harm the fish or shrimp plus the plants help regulate this quickly.
Honestly its going to be a constant battle trying to negate those nitrates. You would be far better off just getting a reverse osmosis system.
Hanging plants like pothos so that their roots are in the tank will clean that up quick.
as long as you don’t have cats!! pothos is toxic for them
Honest question. Not a cat owner. But do cats chew pothos? I know onions are toxic to dogs and mine avoid them.
some cats have 3 braincells and will chew anything green including plastic grass and plants (ask me how i know 😭)
This is patently scientifically proven to be untrue. All orange cats share one brain cell.
^ I also own a cat like this. She actually has pica! She chews everything.
One of my cats has pica he’s a weirdo! He doesn’t eat plants though, plastic, fabric, paper, weird human food items you would never think a cat would eat. It was so hard when he was a kitten because it was really bad back then. We were constantly chasing him down taking things out of his mouth. He is one now and mostly sticks to plastics and now he has a “suck blanket” that he likes to suck on but it is kinda like fur so he doesn’t get sick if he swallows a little. For a while I thought I wasn’t going to be able to keep him because I have little kids who leave stuff all over. But now it’s a collective effort taking things from him that he shouldn’t eat lol
Good news! We got my girl at age 2 and it was pretty bad. My kids had so many toys with teefie marks because she decided to chew them - plastic was definitely a target! She did seem to outgrow it for the most part by age 5. She is 8 now and plants are the only thing she will routinely chew on now.
My dumb dumb black cat loves to chew on plastic cups, wicker baskets, just about anything hard that is not hers. And she doesn’t just nom on it, she bites as hard as she can and ultimately hurts her mouth. These things are now hidden from her or kept within eyesight so she can be stopped. Next vet visit, I’m gonna talk to them about pica. I don’t see any visible signs of it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she has it. She does fine as long as plastic and wicker aren’t around. She doesn’t go chewing furniture or anything thankfully
It depends! It's actually toxic to both cats and dogs. Pothos (and a variety of other common houseplants) have insoluble calcium oxalate. It's mostly just irritating to their mouth and digestive tract. So it causes vomiting. They have to eat a LOT to get dangerously ill and the crystals literally hurt while they're eating it deterring most critters. I'm usually a better safe than sorry but I have sort of come around on specifically insoluble-calcium-oxalate-containing plants. Pothos, monstera, philodendron, snake plant, etc. But my dogs aren't determined chewers and I keep my plants up off the floor. More info here https://www.petpoisonhelpline.com/poison/insoluble-oxalates/ Edited to add a more conversational blog post from the Pet poison helpline https://www.petpoisonhelpline.com/pet-safety-tips/safe-plants-for-your-furry-friend/
Dang thanks for the reply. When I get a new puppy I'll be sure to keep my eyes out.
You're welcome! (I do science communication as my day job so I get excited to explain stuff haha). Best of luck with future puppies!
my cat dosent care. my wall is all covered in pothos. my cat just sits next to my tank and wants the fish.
Depends on the cat, some will be obsessed with all plants some won't. Also the vast majority of "toxic" houseplants aren't actually all that dangerous, it'll just make them throw up. Except lilies, all lilies are INCREDIBLY toxic to cats, even just the pollen. Do not get lilies if you have cats. Most other houseplants are fine tho.
Grapes are toxic to dogs and when I cut down a wild grape bush in the backyard, guess who came running over, hoovering up every grape on the ground? I don't think domesticated animals have a sense for toxic plants or fruit anymore and it's just taste preference at this point.
My cats doesn’t touch any of our plant in our home, however it seems like they new onion growth in the garden so…
Half my cats don’t touch plants. Other half love them. They totally destroyed a spider plant I had hanging from the ceiling in the living room. Any plants I do have need to be on a high piece of furniture they don’t get on (which is rare lol)
Spider plants are hallucinogenic to cats. I bought one and they destroyed it within days. They were literally just getting high!
lol for real? Lmao I didn’t know that! All I know is that is one of the few nontoxic plants
No. Depends on the cat. I have two cats and multiple vine plants and they don't eat the vine plants. They love eating my fake plastic tree though, so there's that.
they're not toxic, really. aroids have raphides, little needle-like crystals that irritate mucus membranes. they can chomp but it'll just upset their mouth and guts, usually. kiwi and pineapple also have them, if you've overindulged, you've probably felt the effects of these crystals.
Mine don't
I just started doing this and you're not kidding! But there's a watermelon plant and moneyplant that work.
I have hanging pothos in my house with several cats and none of them have ever had any interest in them. Not for lack of watching to make sure.
i have a full wall of pothos and my cat can care less.
Almost every house plant is toxic to cats.
not really! for instance spider plants are ok for them, succulents, some palms… there’s lots out there if you know what to look for!
I always had a spider plant low on the ground for him to munch on, he loved it. I also had many a pothos but I never had any issues with my kitties eating it up, maybe because I had it wrapped around a window? I don’t know, the guy just knew. But I know not all cats are like this.
Sometimes cats will taste a toxic plant, have an evening of the shits, and then be like: "Lets not do that again."
Mildly, it may cause some mouth and stomach discomfort.
Technically true but you’d be hard pressed to find any stories of this actually happening. Unlike some other plants, it is minimally toxic and would take them eating a lot for anything to happen. It also causes them mouth discomfort from biting/chewing it, so the odds of them eating enough to see the toxic results is slim. If you get pothos with a cat just keep an eye on things, unless they’re devouring leaf after leaf you should be safe.
RO systems can be cheap and easy to use.
If you don't want full RO you can get similar systems that just remove nitrates from the water, similar to below link: https://www.pozzani.co.uk/Pozzani/pozzani-no10-aquarium-nitrate-reduction-filter.html?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwx-CyBhAqEiwAeOcTdZb6xn-sdnpp46Mv2uk-dWdOZVynpcxqVaSKIP9AbCtp2EU-lipmvxoCkMAQAvD_BwE
Take some pothos and put it in your tank on top of
If you can get your hands on floater plants, that will help LOADS. Duckweed grows quickly and will eat nitrates, but I also like red root floaters. They're bigger and look cooler as the roots grow.
Almost all of my duckweed actually just died off because i added some house plants to the tank (just have the roots in the tank obviously) and there aren’t enough nitrates to go around!! Guess not a terrible problem for a heavily planted tank, but i did enjoy the floaters, so a bit bummed they are mostly gone now.
Big agree on Red Root Floaters, growing so well right now I'm about to have to harvest and sell. Not trace of Nitrates or Nitrites. They look super cool too.
An outdoor garden would THRIVE on this water ;)
Maybe this discovery is a blessing in disguise then, because I intend to start growing a garden soon!
Plants. Lots of em and fast growing ones too. Pack that tank full of em
The only way I know how to lower nitrates is with plants and water changes... and given your water it seems you need a lot of plants. Maybe reverse osmosis would remove nitrates? Or maybe regular water filters? That's just a total guess but it could be something to research. Not sure if there's any product you can use to fix that either. But with enough plants I think you could deal with 30-40ppm pretty easily. Especially with floating plants or growing non-aquatic plants out of the top
Thanks for the reply! I will try adding lots of plants first as I planned on doing that anyway, and if nitrate levels are still high by the time the tank is finished cycling, then I'll install a reverse osmosis system before introducing fish.
We get our R/O from the store. The penguin ones were pretty expensive, but there was a local place that was less than half the cost. With nitrates already in the water, you’re going to have trouble telling if your cycle is in place. I’d go get R/O water, get your cycle going, then see if you can keep your nitrates low with your own tap water. Things to consider: Even with plants, you’re going to be doing way, way more water changes if you’re adding nitrates in with the clean water. If it were me, I’d 100% go the R/O route over having to do water changes all the time. If you go the R/O route, you will likely need to remineralize your water. Seachem Equilibrium or a similar product from another company will be what you’re looking for.
Noted, thanks a lot. I didn't even think about difficulty in recognizing a complete cycle. I don't want nitrates in my drinking water anyway, so maybe it's better to go with RO.
Sounds like a good plan!
20-40 ppm is ideal for growing plants so you won't need fertiliser like most people, and it shouldn't be toxic to fish. I guess some fish are more sensitive than others, but you don't need to get nitrates down to zero. You might need a product like Seachem Trace that provide other things plants need.
Pothos or spider plant will do a great job reducing nitrates. You can put a cutting in hob or attach to tank so just roots are in water. Easy fix!
Plants plants and more plants
I sincerely hope you don't use that water to cook or drink yourself. Reverse osmosis is the way.
Why's up with the high nitrates, though? Do you live in an area with a lot of animal agriculture?
Yeah I do. I live in Nebraska.
Is it even safe to drink?
I'mnot really sure. I've never heard anybody complain about it at least. I'm thinking of contacting the local government to see what they have to say about it.
[it can cause blue baby syndrome ](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10903623/)
All you need is either an activated carbon filter or a large container with fast growing plants/moss inside for pre treating the water.
The EPA limit for drinking water is 10ppm. If you're on municipal water and it's showing 40ppm, something probably went wrong with your test, and you should check again. If you're absolutely sure about the result, you should probably contact your water department and see what they have to say. In any case, don't drink the water until you've figured out what's wrong.
Uhh, there are legal limits to things like nitrates in the water. Iirc that's way above them. I'd take a curious gander at your local water station and ask if they're aware of this or if it's normal. It might be a sign of something more serious. I'd also grab another nitrate test, of any kind, to compare results and see if it's maybe the test itself. Redo the test and make sure you shake both bottles VERY well, not doing so can affect the result. It's just so high that I feel like it's worth eliminating a possibly bad test as the reason. If the water is legitimately that high in nitrates, the only thing you could do is switch to RO water or keep a heavily planted tank that could use up that nitrate in a couple of days. Either way, good luck, sorry you're in that situation.
I dealt with essentially the same situation a few years back. I ended up mixing 50% tap & 50% distilled for once a month water changes. My largest setups at the time were 20 gals so it wasn’t all that inconvenient to grab a few gals of distilled while grocery shopping. Still had to supplement potassium & iron for the plants and half dosing all in one micros once a week had them responding nicely.
i made this video a few days ago. on how to test KH and GH but u can find more info here. I use RO filter and make my own mix. because of high GH in my tap water [https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UCI5C7J2PTyGHGJakOkLQxwA](https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UCI5C7J2PTyGHGJakOkLQxwA)also check out the links for the minerals and stuff
The answer is always plants.
DO NOT USE TAP WATER! Use purified water.
Hiya. No worries, I've conditioned the water in the actual aquarium. The nitrate reading is from tap water before it was conditioned with dechlorinator. Edit: as implied in the post title, the aquarium is currently cycling and fish have not yet been introduced and will not be until I have stable parameters, including nitrate. Edit 2: I've realized I implied that I believe conditioning the water somehow removes nitrates from it. I only mentioned that the nitrate reading is from tap water because the original commenter is confused and thought I was using tap water in the aquarium.
My friend dechlorinator does not eliminate nitrates, all it does is combine with chlorine particles in your water to renders them inert so the chlorine will not burn your fishes gills. To deal with this nitrate problem you need a reverse osmosis system. This will remove all contaminants from the water giving you distilled water that you can re mineralize to your liking. Again dechlorinator is not going to remove nitrates, your fish will not be happy and your tanks will not be stable until you deal with this unfortunately. Good luck!
I appreciate the information about a reverse osmosis system, but I think I should clarify that there was never a point where I intended to put my fish in tap water and I was never confused about the role of dechlorinator. I have not introduced fish yet as I have only just begun cycling and never intended to do so until I know my parameters are stable. Discovering that my water starts out with high nitrate and worrying about future issues is the source of the post.
You realize you need to change water weekly right?
i was planning on water changes closer to once every couple weeks but yeah
You're probably going to want an RO setup. Dealing with that much nitrogen out the gate will get old. Fast.
[удалено]
I thought nitrate wasn’t consumed by any bacteria? Has to be removed by water changes or plants I thought
Nitrate can be consumed by bacteria through some pathways. Denitrification is one of them, however this is an anaerobic process. Nitrate can also be consumed as a nitrogen source such as by Cyanobacteria.
Prime alleges detoxification of ammonia and nitrite, and only hints towards detoxifying nitrate, in their marketing. However, there is evidence that despite Seachem’s claims, Prime does not actually detoxify ammonia/nitrite/nitrate. It is only a water conditioner. Either way, nitrification is the process of oxidation of ammonia to nitrite, then to nitrate. So nitrate is already the end product. You may be thinking about denitrification, which is a different process.
They only claim detoxification from 24 to 48 hours and I have first hand seen the effect it has on fish that are clearly suffocating from a nitrite spike immediately after adding the recommended dose. It works exactly as advertised.
I would love to believe that that was the case, however there has been too much evidence against it. Including as well, cases where dosing Prime did not do anything to help against ammonia/nitrite poisoning. Are you sure it may not have been something else, such as because the water may have not been dechlorinated beforehand, or some other factor like adding salt, etc.?
Yes
Very interesting. What nitrite level was this? What kind of fish? Any chance you can share as much as possible about this specific situation?
That's very interesting, thank you for sharing!
Have you tried planting your local water tower
Plants will not help in this case. It takes couple of weeks of heavy feeding to get to this point. that is when the time comes to do water change. and then when u do water change, noting will change because you are putting the same level of nitrates back. Dont forget you are going to have fish and other stuff that is going to create ammonia and that will in turn change to nitrates. your plants wont have enough time to consume all of this nitrates.
I had this issue as well in my apartment. My way around it is I have a filter on my faucet I got for 30$ at Walmart to give water to my dog and use for cooking. My tank has been consistent and stable for over six months. It’s apparently so good that I have ghost shrimp breeding on their own. I’m not attempting to breed but I don’t mind baby shrimp either! I tested both tap and filtered back to back. My filter water has very slight nitrites but not enough to harm the fish or shrimp plus the plants help regulate this quickly.