High Tide Aquatics

Upset with Red Sea's nitrate test kit.

S

sfsuphysics

Supporting Member
BARcard
So tested phosphate 0.1ppm range, ok fine... tested nitrate... and the water does not change color. 3 separate times I did the test, the last one with the refill kit I just got, and still no color change at all. And I have a really hard time believing my nitrate is 0 considering I don't dose carbon, i don't have any chaeto (I mean sure some algae grows on the side of the lagoon but this is a thin film not thick mat), the only filtration is a protein skimmer, and I feed primarily flake fish food.

I mean is there any way that nitrates can actually be 0 if phosphates are especially considering I don't actively do anything to try and reduce nitrate.
 
Yes zero nitrate is totally possible, I have the same kit. Your tank might be nitrate limited. This is exactly the scenario you would dose nitrate to bring your phosphate down.
 
Agree, as long as the kit isn’t expired and you’re doing it right, you probably have 0 nitrate. it’s not that uncommon.
 
Just seems odd to have zero nitrates, yet have phosphates. Maybe the rim of the lagoon is acting like one huge algae turf scrubber since it's not something I'm scraping off into the water column. I did one last test this evening, and my wife agrees there's not much there, there might be a SLIGHTLY pinkish tint, but it's no where close to the first colored dot on the Red Sea kit. But just for good measure, I'll get a cheapy API nitrate test kit just to see.
 
If you have enough bio-available carbon, either nitrate or phosphate will be 0. That’s why "overdosing" on carbon dosing bottoms out one or the other. We are just used to our systems being carbon-limited so there is nitrate and phosphate around. 1 of the 3 is going to be zero in most systems. Usually it’s carbon but maybe for you it’s nitrate.
 
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