My ammonia is high and I am using spring water. Also my nitrates are high as well. I did use the sun light from my window. Is the spring water should I be using? I just went and checked my viles again, and now I do not see any ammonia, but I do have some Nitrates. my nitrates is 5.0 ppm i think i am good for now.
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Let's start at the beginning. If you use anything other than just plain white paper to view your vials against, you are not going to get a true reading. Light waves mix and make colors of their own. For example, yellow, when placed in front of anything blue would look green to you. Even ziplock bags use this little "trick" to show you when your bags are correctly sealed as one side of the zipper is yellow and the other side is blue. As their slogan says, " If it's not green, it's not sealed."
If you use any light besides sunlight, you will get an altered color. The next time you go to a home store like Home Depot or Lowes or similar, go to the lighting department and check out the displays they have that show how the different bulbs will look against a white background and you will see that they all will look different to your eyes. This is why natural sunlight is the best as it's not altered.
If you have fish and you are feeding them or ammonia in your tap water or anything dead in a tank that is decomposing and creating ammonia, you are going to have nitrates as that is the end product of the nitrogen cycle. The only way to not have nitrates is to have an open system where the water is constantly being changed so nothing accumulates. 5 ppm is not high by any standard. Recommended levels are under 40 ppm. Fish can live in higher nitrate levels but it does seem to effect their lifespans. Regular water changes should keep your nitrate levels below the 40 ppm.
To make you feel better, take a sample of your new spring water and test it for ammonia and nitrate, the correct way as I've described, so you know that the water is not the issue. Both of these values should be 0. If they aren't, take a sample of your new water and your test kits to your LFS and have them do the test to compare and make sure your test reagents are accurate.
These test kits we use are not going to give you exact numbers but are a reference point as to the presence of the chemicals in the water. If you test them wrong or use the wrong amounts of the chemicals or the reagents go bad, you are not going to get accurate readings. This is why if you ever get a questionable test result, you should do a second test in another vial to confirm. Either use your test kit or have another person do the test to confirm your readings. Once you have confirmation of your results, you can act appropriately.
Hope this helps.
