Water Testing

[carla85uk]

ok i am fairly new to keeping tropcal fish and have just tested my water using tetra strips,
i have no idea what the results mean.

it is showing...

NO3 - 50
NO2 - 1
GH - >16 Od
KH -20 Od
PH - 7.6

I am totally lost, i have no idea what any of it means? can anyone please explain these results to me in simple terms?
thanks
Carla

 

[Inchworm]

Hi carla85uk

I'll move your thread over to the New Tank section where you will get lots of help understanding your test results.

 

[carla85uk]

thanks! any ideas welcome im totally lost with this sort of thing

 

[orange shark]

Hi there,

NO3 is your nitrate, which is a substance only toxic in large quantities. At 50 this is ok/may be a tad high.

N02 is nitrite, a toxic substance to your fish. This reading will be caused by the nitrogen cycle (have a look at this link: Nitrogen Cycle) This means you are doing a fish-in cycle, which will possibly kill your existing fish as the bacteria that combats the ammonia and nitrite levels will not have grown in your filter yet. This will require daily water changes to keep the levels down.

Your pH is ideal for most fish.

orange_shark

 

[orange shark]

anyone please feel free to correct me if im wrong, bit rusty with the fish stuff!

 

[carla85uk]

thankyou, all 3 of my angel fish have died in the last 3 weeks. my other fish seem fine though. i have been doing water changes all week now, but dont know where i am going wrong.

 

[Dan-CR4]

get yourself an api master test kit, it is a liquid reagent kit that will give you better results than test strips.

 

[OldMan47]

Your results mean almost nothing to me Carla. As Dan implied, the test strips are not the most reliable of indications. If I could actually trust your readings, I would tell you to do two consecutive 75% water changes to reduce the nitrites. With a strip test, I don't know whether to trust the results or not. If you really have 1 ppm of nitrites, the first water change would drive the total down to around 0.25 ppm of nitrites and the second would give you time for the poisons to accumulate before tomorrow's test without exceeding the levels that are safe for your fish. The other numbers in your test results are not nearly as serious as the nitrite reading. They will be equally helped by the water changes so they will become better on their own.

 

[carla85uk]

ok i did a 75% change last night, will test again after work tonight and see if it is any better
thanks

 

[carla85uk]

just did another test, all i have is the strips right now which read,

no3 - 25
no2 - 1
ph - 7.6

i think i will take the water into the shop and have them test it for me!

my tank is under treatment for white spot too with ns3 in there, so i dont know if that will effect the read or not either, the colour chart with the strips are so similar it is hard to tell if im right or not

 

[Ryefish]

I always do my tests in the order of PH, Ammonia, NO2 and then NO3 - in order of bad to good (PH is easiest to test so i do that first lol), so i dont get myself in a muddle and can keep track of what is processing what.

If your shop uses a liquid test rather than a strip test then taking some water to the shop would be a good idea