Conversion chart

[SarahBravo]

Does anyone know where i could find a conversion chart or some assistance converting milligrams per litre to parts per million for ammonia/nitrite/nitrate readings? And also give me an idea of 'safe' nitrate levels?

Thank you!

Sarah

 

[The-Wolf]

1 milligram per litre = 1 ppm

EDIT
safe nitrate is zero

 

[SarahBravo]

Gee, am I dumb or what!?!?! Thank you!!! In that case my reading of 100mg/l nitrate is way overboard.... time for a water change I guess, even tho' I've got no fishies.



Sarah

 

[clutterydrawer]

Gee, am I dumb or what!?!?! Thank you!!! In that case my reading of 100mg/l nitrate is way overboard.... time for a water change I guess, even tho' I've got no fishies.



Sarah

Zero nitrate is safe...but then so are slightly higher readings. I believe most people aim to keep it at around 20, but it's not toxic, as such till it's higher if it was at say 50-60 I think it'd be cause for concern. Have you jsut finished a fishless cycle?

 

[SarahBravo]

Still cycling i think. I couldn't find a souce of ammonia, so i was just adding 2 pinches of fish food per day plus some filter start stuff and seeing what was happening. guess i've been going about 3 weeks now. I was very excited by my first ammonia reading! I did recently put in a lot of plants and added plant food, but that claimed not to have nitrates, so guess my friendly bacteria must be working. There's some brown algae stuff on the plants and rocks which a marine friend of mine says is good.... so may leave it another week with the fish food etc, do some water changes and then add some zebra danio as long as the nitrates have gone down. Does this sound okay?

Sarah

 

[FrankSlapperinni]

1 milligram per litre = 1 ppm

EDIT
safe nitrate is zero

I thought PPM stood for parts per million (IE 1 ppm of ammonia means 1 out of every one million particles in the aquarium is ammonia.), and as I recall a liter weighs 1000 mg (maybe you meant ml?). So wouldn't it be 1 ml out of 1000 liters = 1 ppm?
I'm just speculating though, I have nothing to back this up.

 

[clutterydrawer]

I thought PPM stood for parts per million (IE 1 ppm of ammonia means 1 out of every one million particles in the aquarium is ammonia.), and as I recall a liter weighs 2000 mg (maybe you meant ml?). So wouldn't it be 1 ml out of 1000 liters = 1 ppm?
I'm just speculating though, I have nothing to back this up.

I didn't follow that in the slightest...but I can confirm that 1ppm = 1mg per litre.

Surely a litre weighs 1kg?

 

[The-Wolf]

I thought PPM stood for parts per million (IE 1 ppm of ammonia means 1 out of every one million particles in the aquarium is ammonia.), and as I recall a liter weighs 2000 mg (maybe you meant ml?). So wouldn't it be 1 ml out of 1000 liters = 1 ppm?
I'm just speculating though, I have nothing to back this up.

I didn't follow that in the slightest...but I can confirm that 1ppm = 1mg per litre.

Surely a litre weighs 1kg?

I got the info from
here

 

[FrankSlapperinni]

I just made a typo, I meant water weighs 1000 mg. But what I didn't understand is why you would use the weight of water for one instance (especially since water can vary in weight slightly) , but for the other use volume.

Now that I look at the conversion chart I see I was right in saying that 1 ppm = 1 ml of 1000 liters (1 micro liter), but that 1 mg per liter = 1 ppm.

I didn't follow that in the slightest...

Ok, Imagine it like this. you have a one liter aquarium, and the tank is exactly full and weighs one kilogram. you put a drop of ammonia in, and when you measure it in ppm's, it is exactly one. Surly if you divide a liter by 1,000,000, your going to get less than a mg (only a thousandth of a liter).

EDIT: Never Mind, for some reason I got to thinking that a mg is like a ml, in being a 1000 of a kilogram, where in fact a mg the a thousandth of a gram, which is a thousandth of a kilogram. So a Milligram is a One Millionth of a kilogram, and a mg = 1 ppm. Sorry for the mistake.