How To Change A Filter?

[marcybeth0281]

Sorry for the hijack! Haha....yes, you'll be fine with just the sponge.

And I agree about the ammo-chips. I only use them for a quick ammonia fix in case of a scare - and NEVER during the cycling of any tank - I haven't run them full-time in either of my tanks in a long while. I do use the carbon, as I find it really does help the clarity of the water.

 

[razer121]

so, would this benifit me now as i belive ive got a ammonia spike going on.....doing 50% water changes daily to try and destroy it...my Nitrates are hitting past 100....which from what ive read is really bad, would this carbon help me?

 

[rabbut]

Carbon is not likely to help an Ammonia, Nitrite or Nitrate spike, unless you have a lot of organics in there, which you can often see as "water discolouration". Wow, nitrates at 100ppm! What test kit are you using, how old is it and what is the tap water nitrate reading? That is very high (but not dangerous)

 

[razer121]

i dont know my tap water conditions lol, but im using a tetra strip test kit, its brand new, i only bought it the other day

 

[three-fingers]

There you go, that sounds too high, it is possible they nitrates are that high, but it's more likely that the test is wrong.

Test strips are notoriously inaccurate. Liquid test kits are vastly better, but even then not amazingly accurate.

 

[rabbut]

As three fingers says, the high Nitrate reading is down to the test kits. It's not un-common to do a water test with two strips on the same sample of water and get completely different readings on each strip. They almost always give a false high/low also... While Liquid drop test kits aren't as accurate as lab tests, they give consistent results that aren't usually too far out if you have followed the instructions

I usually say that if you want to use test strips, you ought to save some money by asking the next-door neighbour to come up with random numbers for the results for you, it's usually as accurate as your average strip test kit

All the best
Rabbut

 

[razer121]

which test do you think i should get then??

 

[rabbut]

Most Liquid Drop test kits are about the same for ease of use and accuracy. I pesonally use Tetratest liquids, but only as they are easily available. API is well recomended on here, and Nutrafin get good write-ups also