Api Test Kits

[112092]

Hey

i just tested my ammonia...it came up a really clear shade of greeen which is lighter than .25, .5 or 1.0ppm.

The 0ppm color is yellow.

it seem's like it is lighter than the .25ppm reading but it doesn't have the yellowish tinge to it, so it looks like a very clear version of the 1ppm color.


As it seems a very clearish green color...should i take this as a color close to 0? I was assuming this because it appears that the higher the colour the higher the concentration.

I know my description has been somewhat vague but i would appreicate any comments...
thanks!!

 

[Osian]

Myself, although i'm very new to it and only have a 4 gallon tank, if i see anything but yellow i do a water change as i dont want my betta to get stressed.

 

[112092]

kk
thanks for your advice

just thought i should add that im doing a fishless cycle!

 

[littlest]

looking at my API ammonia colour card... that sounds like a weird result. If it was lighter than 0.25, normally I'd say it's somewhere between 0 and 0.25, but if it doesn't have a yellowish tinge maybe its nearer 1.

If you are doing a fishless cycle, it doesn't matter too much. Just top the ammonia back up to about 4ppm and carry on. Hopefully next time you'll get a clearer result.

 

[waterdrop]

A close relative of mine is a dye chemist so we had him watch when we learned the API tests. He said this type of matching of liquid color reagent tests with printed color charts was very common in his labs and the training was to always go for what he called the "quality" of the color - so for example in the ammonia test it is in fact the amount of yellow vs green that you should worry about, not the "clearness" of the green, if that makes any sense. He said the liquid color will always have a different "look" even when it is meant to match perfectly.

I think the longer you do it, the less you worry about exactness and the more you treat it as an indicator of some sort. Often you just want the test to confirm the direction, the movement of the amount of the substance under test. Or you really just want to know presence or absence. I think in your case you probably were seeing 1ppm and it just had that clear attribute to the look.

I remember during phase 1 of my fishless cycling the nitrite kept looking such a pale purple that I began wondering if I was imagining that the zero color could be blue. I tested my tap water again and there it was, a nice pale blue with no hint of purple! Then when Nitrite spiked, the purple was really gaudy purple but then it spiked even more and you could see the moment of dark blue-green of the sunken drop right at the beginning of the nitrite test and you knew you didn't even need to wait the 5 minutes.

~~waterdrop~~