Great, then I'm not alone in my nitrate-reading frustrations.
I with Don here with testing, due to "personal proclivities" I need to know. I recently took my tank, tap, and softener water samples to a pool store to check TDS, but my fresh tank was partially under a salt treatment so TDS was sky high and not useful.
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some of my work accepted by Pentax (the camera bodies I use): http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/artists/davidgray
Yes tds,ph and ammonia digital testers are pretty cheap on ebay. As to nitrate it really doesn’t matter.
Nitrate is a huge issue here as for those on well water here the nitrate levels are unsafe, and my municipal water is at 7.43ppm from my kitchen sink
So I test for ammonia and nitrate before using my filtered tap water which tests at 4.3ppm
The unfiltered tap water was tested by a certified lab as there is a double standard as to what is acceptable levels of nitrate in Oregon with wells having an action level of 7ppm and municipal water having an action level of 10ppm.
Also those values are NO3 nitrogen, not the test strip nitrate, correct? If so, to get the values we usually refer to, miltiply NO3 nitrogen values by 4.4
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I’ve bought them used them left them sitting around till the batteries melted than threw them away . I’m not big on testing.
Low nitrates are critical for reef keeping. Especially when growing hard corals.
The only test kits reefers use is from Salifert.
Many posts on the unreliable and inaccuracy of API test kits
I was told Hanna products were also popular, not so?
Expensive not so sure popular. People do have them but not many. Even here.
I figured a conversion to multiply the marine nitrate checker by 0.443 which gets close to the actual reading of nitrate from a certified lab, but is still a wild guess. The freshwater photometer for nitrate is dead on for what the certified lab tested. Yes it is more expensive, but I was needing to prove to the city that their water at the end user was all jacked up no matter what their tests at their source water was. Also often the Marine meter would read over 75ppm which is where it quits reading which meant I was unable to convert the marine reading to a freshwater reading.
Fact: I grow black bear algae in my toilet. This means the spores are in the fresh water lines. The city needs to shock their lines to kill it as they only have 0.17ppm chlorine in the tap water from my kitchen sink which is not enough to kill the algae spores.
Your method may work, but I needed precision.
God is the artist, he merely allows me to see and capture his work . http://davesphotography7055.zenfolio.com/ coupon code: angelfish
some of my work accepted by Pentax (the camera bodies I use): http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/artists/davidgray