Water Color ApI Tests

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BrokerTamara

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May 6, 2013
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Tamara
I am getting good at reading the test. All has been good on my new freshwater tank with Nitrite 0 and maybe slight orange color on Nitrate which is ok. Ph is staying same as old tank at 7.6 which is fine.

Now Ammonia I am checking twice a day and I have changed some of the water twice this week on 90 gallon with/29 gallon sump and overflow system. Getting that routine down. Fish are happy in the tank and still feeding lightly as I am using cycled media and all good.

Now the ammonia is yellow when I test which means 0. I do not want to have any ideally. Now it looks like on the chart that .25 is close to the yellow with a slight green tint. I am always double checking this. Any other better way. The yellow in my last tank when tested was slightly lighter.

I am looking for ideas.

PINKY 11.jpg


Thanks,
Tamara

Full Tank Picture.jpg

Full Tank Picture.jpg PINKY 11.jpg
 
If you're using Prime as your dechlorinator, it will show a false positive, essentially the .25 on the ammonia test.
 
Prime is a better dechlorinator. And if you know a reading of .25 is really a reading of 0, does it really matter that it shows .25?
 
No- just don't trust most aquarium ammonia test kits at very low or very high reading levels. But here is an easy way to know.

If you have an established cycled tank, that means you have sufficient Ammnonia and Nitrite oxidizing bacteria to handle the tank's bio-load. This means you cruise along at basically 0/0. Now there is almost nothing that will happen in a tank to kill one type but not the other. They live in the same bio-film.

Therefore, if you measure ammonia present that is really there, it is because there is more ammonia present than your Ammonia oxidizers can handle. They must reproduce to catch up. But this also means you don't have sufficient Nirtite oxidizers to handle the increased nitrite load that should be coming their way. You should be able to test some level of nitrite within a short time after you got the ammonia reading. If you can't/don't, that would strongly indicate that the ammonia reading was a false one.

But here is an interesting video on testing by the Ph.D. microbiologist who discovered the types of bacteria at work in aquariums to handle cycling chores.

[video=youtube;ZPiDRid_Km8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPiDRid_Km8[/video]
 
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