Nitrate tests - questions

[jessibell]

I've had a five gallon since feb 27th. The ammonia has been reduced to less that 0.25 (practically zero, really) for the past week, and the nitrites are finally starting to drop below 3.3 (the max on my kit) I was SOOOO excited!

To celebrate I bought a nitrate tester. (The nutrafin brand - our LFS doesn't carry the API ones) I did a test, and the results looked very high, which i thought was weired. Then I read the package (yes, I am one of those who dogs into something before reading the instructions!) and it says high nitrites will cause the test to be ineffective because what the drops do is change the NO3 into NO2 and then that gives you an idea of how much NO3 was in the sample.

So this means in order to get an accurate nitrate reading, the nitrite has to be pretty much down to zero first???? fml

 

[neilanh]

yeah, that's pretty much true. However, in my experience, having high NO2 causes the NO3 test to read low. I guess YMMV.

I assume you're doing a fishless cycle? If so, dont worry about the NO3 until it's totally done. High levels of ammonia and/or nitrIte just cause that test to wack out. If you are doing fishless, expect very high numbers (real numbers) when the cycle does complete - hence why you do a large water change before getting fishies.

 

[jessibell]

yes it is a fishless cycle. The nitrates are high but finally going down. I don't have pure ammonia but used some already dead fish and just let them decay. I've been feeding the tank with fish food every day since the fish dissapeared. So I guess I just wait until there is no more nitrite to speak of. I am quite excited to get the fry out of the little tank and into the five gallon. I just hope they live through it. I am taking every precaution this time!

 

[mfdrookie516]

you need to really be careful about using dead fish... although the theory is the same as using cocktail shrimp, dead fish usually die for a reason, and if anything other than old age or some tragic event, the risk of spreading a disease to your new inhabitants is pretty big imo

 

[jessibell]

I did think of that, but I was pretty sure these individuals died from shock. They were some feeders that someone gave to me and they died pretty much as soon as they hit the new tank. Of course there's no way to tell for sure though, you're right. I figured if there was no hosts in the tank for anything to infect, anything would die off in time. It sounds kind of stupid now that I think about it!