Help Reading Levels. Is My Water Really This Clean?

[theotheragentm]

I have a 55-gallon tank, which has a few live plants in them, but it really is quite minimal. I am also running a Rena XP3 filter on it. In the tank I have 4 Gouramis, 3 adult Platies, 1 adult Molly, 2 Panda Cories, 20 or so Molly/Platy fry of various sizes from just born to 1/2", 20 ghost shrimp running around the bottom, and one mystery snail about ping pong ball sized.

This is how little the tank is planted. It does look pretty empty, so that might explain my readings, but read on for that.

The last water change I did was six days ago, and I only changed about 10 gallons or so. I used my AP Master Test Kit tonight and I have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, and 0 nitrates. I'm following in the instructions on the test kit, but I find it hard to believe that I can have 0 on the nitrate.

Can someone maybe give me a pointer as to what I might be doing wrong during the testing? If this is a normal reading, can someone explain it to me? I thought Nitrates should always still exist if the fish are pooping.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[neilanh]

How long has the tank been stocked?

I hear that NO3 readings, when below 20ppm or so, are not very accurate. That the best range for accuracy on the AP kits is between 20 and 80, so ifyou're below there it isn't necessarily accurate. It's also extremely important that you mix Bottle 2 "vigorously" for 30 seconds, then the vial/sample for 1 solid minute when testing, but I'm sure you're aware of that.

But I do agree that if you have 0 on an established tank, that's kinda odd.

Gorgeous tank BTW

 

[theotheragentm]

I retested the nitrates and go a color closer to 5 PPM. Is this normal after a week with the stock level I have?

Thanks for the compliment. I need to put a background on the tank to hide the wires and tubes. I know nothing about proper plant care, but those plants seem to be doing very well, growing new leaves and roots.

 

[Devilishturtles]

Plants take up nitrate as the photosynthesize, but I doubt you have nearly enough plants in there to absorb all of your nitrates. It could be that you just have a very good filter, very neat fish, and are understocked.

Yay!

Lovely tank, btw. I really like it.

 

[theotheragentm]

Yeah, I purposely oversized my filter and did not get more fish at this time, because I knew the fry would be abundant and I'd have to wait out a bit and see how it all panned out.

One thing I noticed too is that Ghost Shrimp and the Mystery Snail will make a snack out of fish poo. While I know they create their own waste, double processing can't be too bad. It's likely to be more concentration on the pure waste side, but at least the part that wasn't pure waste from the fish got processed instead of rotting.