I had to recently fight a bad / high nitrate problem, but if it wasn't for the bubbles / foaming at the top of the tank, I wouldn't have bothered with the test kits.
Fish seem to do fine, although the initial N-ates test was 160ppm or maxed out on the AP test kit chart.
The Aquarium Pharmaceuticals NO3 test kit chart goes from yellow to red.
Reading up to 20ppm is pretty easy, but anything more than that can take a lot of staring to discern the different shades of red.
My initial test from this kit was easily "blood red".
A flurry of water changes dropped it easily down to 20ppm.
Most will recommend to get it lower than that.
The Wardley brochure (that came with my ammonia test kit) says 60ppm is okay - many will argue that's too high.
The fish didn't really show any change between the high N-ates and low N-ates change.
At least the bubbles / foaming have been minimized.
I really don't like adding chemicals to the water, and I've gone the route of "more plants" to try and get the N-ates in check.
Also, converting from a UGF to a RUGF looks to help also with my problems.
Fish seem to do fine, although the initial N-ates test was 160ppm or maxed out on the AP test kit chart.
The Aquarium Pharmaceuticals NO3 test kit chart goes from yellow to red.
Reading up to 20ppm is pretty easy, but anything more than that can take a lot of staring to discern the different shades of red.
My initial test from this kit was easily "blood red".
A flurry of water changes dropped it easily down to 20ppm.
Most will recommend to get it lower than that.
The Wardley brochure (that came with my ammonia test kit) says 60ppm is okay - many will argue that's too high.
The fish didn't really show any change between the high N-ates and low N-ates change.
At least the bubbles / foaming have been minimized.
I really don't like adding chemicals to the water, and I've gone the route of "more plants" to try and get the N-ates in check.
Also, converting from a UGF to a RUGF looks to help also with my problems.
