Grants Light Not Reading NItrates

I finally found some Grants Light Stump Remover for dosing NO3 and was going to use it while I waited for my order from Greg Watson to get here.

I mixed it as per Chuck's page on dosing NO3, but I doubled everything: 500ml water, 4 tbs Stump Remover. It's in a container so that I can dose all the planted tanks.

Out of curiousity I decided to test the solution with my AP nitrates kit (I wanted to see the pretty colors that I never get to see).

Nothing happened. Everything just kinda separated and wouldn't mix.

So I took a couple of ounces of water one of my tanks, put a ¼ tsp of the solution and tank water in one test tube and just tank water in the other test tube. Everything mixed fine.

There is no difference in the color between the two at all. Both read at about 7.0

What gives?

Roan

reiverix said:

Try adding 1 tsp of KNO3 to 1 gallon of water. It will give you a nitrate reading that's through the roof. Should be blood red on the AP chart otherwise I'd say somethings up with the test kit.

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Will do.
I hope it's not the test kit. It's 0305, so it should be good.

Roan

Didn't work. I tried two different nitrate kits, different brands. No go.

I'm just going to trash this stuff and wait for the Greg Watson delivery.

Roan

reiverix said:

Did you mean 0305 being the expiry date? As in March 2005.

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Yes, but from what I understand the shelf life is one year *from* the date printed on the bottles.

I did test it with another type of kit, which I hate, but it didn't budge with that one either.

Roan