Could you please read this nitrate test

I just purchased one of these test kits, I also wonder about the nirate test, my tanks registers at the 40ppm. In the phamplet under nitrate test (page 17) in mine. Under "testing Tips" it states "The freshwate Nitrate test color chart is the appropiate chart to use for testing freshwate aquariums TO which salt has been added. This test kit measures nitrate as nitrate ion or 'total' nitrate''. (Other nitrate test kits that measure 'nitrate nitrogen' (NO3N) will give reading 4.4 times LESS than this test kit.
I don't add salt to my water, does this mean this tes,t in this kit will not test correctly with my water????
 
Hmmmm.. in a whole bunch of years of doing API testing and helping others with them, you're the first to bring this up. I dug out my own booklet, which is several years old and I see what you are talking about.

My first thoughts are that ALL FW tanks have some salt in them. Unless folks are using distilled water or RO water (BTW, neither of which will support life very long), there is going to be some salt in the water. Since the page doesn't say how much salt, I'm almost wondering if that is either some kind of slip up that nobody ever caught until you did... or if it's some kind of marketing ploy to try and sell API Aquarium Salt... which is just plain salt at about 10 times the price of plain salt bought at a grocery store. Without some definite reply or information from API, I would say that ALL FW has salt in it already so the test kit should work. I've seen folks compare the API kit to other kits and I have compared the API kit to the Tetra-Laborette kit and came up with very similar results. BTW.. those two kits are both available at Walmart.com for around $15.00 each with free shipping to your local store... best bargain I've found on a master test kit!

I did a Google search of that quoted sentence and found a couple of other hits so you're not the first to ever notice that sentence. There is even this old 2007 thread from this forum... but the OP never did post any reply from API. http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=783194. Every other hit that I looked at were to actual product sales pages where they had the instructions re-printed on the sales page.

So, all that said, I would say that the fact that all *normal* FW has some salt in it, the results should be accurate... unless API says there is supposed to be some kind of elevated level of salt... then they have some serious 'splainin to do (in my best Ricky Ricardo voice).
 
I don't add salt to my water, does this mean this tes,t in this kit will not test correctly with my water????
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The API nitrate test can be used with both marine and freshwater aquariums. The only difference is in the color cards you compare to. For a marine aquarium you use the saltwater color card, for a freshwater aquarium you use the freshwater color card. The information in the pamphlet is meant for people that add a small amount of aquarium salt to their freshwater aquarium so they won't use the saltwater color card.

The test kit will work just fine on your aquarium.
 
I still wonder if it's a typo and should have said "to which NO salt has been added" as adding salt seems like it would throw things off and kind of morph the colors between the FW and SW color cards.
 
I scored a 22 on the x-rite test.

And the nitrate test looks like 5ppm to me.
 
GoldLenny said:
I still wonder if it's a typo and should have said "to which NO salt has been added" as adding salt seems like it would throw things off and kind of morph the colors between the FW and SW color cards.
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I think you'd have to actually bring the salinity up noticeably to see a difference.

I'll take some of the water out of one of my tanks and add some salt and see if I see a difference in the test results.
 
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