Is It Ok To Have No Nitrates?

[blur411]

Cambojnr how far are you into a cycle? If you are in the beginning steps you will have 0. Ammonia has to be converted to Nitrite, then Nitrites turn to Nitrates.

 

[4seasons]

Haha guys, instead, I had a cup of coffee and then went crazy shaking them. I now have a reading of 10ppm of Nitrates. I feel better. That was driving me nuts... and man the instructions should elaborate a little more on the intense shaking! Thanks so much for your help everyone!

The instructions just say to add 10 drops from bottle #1 shake, then in bold it says shake bottle #2 vigorously, then add 10 drops from bottle #2 and shake.

What it doesn't say is this stuff has been sitting on a shelf for a year and has setup. You need to bang the crap out of this bottle to make sure all the solid stuff in the bottom of the bottle is mixed in again.
After you get it mixed using the drumming on table method one good time all you have to do is keep it from setting up again. I just shake them a little every time I pull my kit out so that the next time I check nitrates all it needs is about a 10-15 second bashing bottle #1 and bottle #2 together and it works just fine.

 

[DJH584]

Personally, I will be getting a new nitrate test kit and starting over. The reason being that before I knew about beating the living daylights out of the bottle No2, I had been using the fluid that sat on top of the solids in the bottom of the bottle. So any attempt now to get an accurate reading would in fact be futile. Methinks it would be better to start again from scratch.

David

 

[cambojnr]

Cambojnr how far are you into a cycle? If you are in the beginning steps you will have 0. Ammonia has to be converted to Nitrite, then Nitrites turn to Nitrates.

should of mentioned its 60l, its cycled and only been up a month and a half as 0 ammonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate ph7 due to having gravel and some rocks, I had 4 messy shubunkins in so got rid of them in a 400,000 gallon pond and switched to tropical and got my 7 neons yesterday which came from a tank with ph 7.2, I also have 1 anubia plant and 2 long grassy type things not sure what they are called. and plan to get some bogwood next time I go to the shop to try lower my ph abit for a brisslenose plec, but still i've read that 0 nitrate can just mean I have a very clean tank as with the 4 shubunkins i used to do 10% water change every 2 days.