On Wed, 18 Jun 2003 18:41:24 -0400, Greg
wrote:

Everything I have read indicates that the large water changes are nesasary
to maintain the balance and replenish some of the trace elements etc...

Ugghh... I was afraid of that...

Large water changes are kind of a safety net. If you are adding too
much of something, or if you are missing some trace element, a large
water change helps keep things balanced. But large water changes are
not an automatic necessity over the long term.

I did a nitrate test with a Hagen kit and came up with 0mg/L.
I guess it should be somewhere around 10-20mg/L for optimal growth?

Be VERY!!! careful trusting the test kit. Maybe mix up a reference
sample, or repeat the test using a reputable test kit before trusting
it. For "reputable", I'd say either Seachem or Lamotte. Not sure
about the Hagen nitrate kit. If the test kit isn't properly
indicating the nitrate level, then it's easy to massively overdose
without knowing it.

To mix a reference solution, you can mix 1 teaspoon KNO3 with 500ml of
water. Then take 1ml of that solution, and mix it with 500ml of
water. That should result in 13.73ppm Nitrate.


Chuck Gadd
http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua