taken care of, and I just tested my nitrates (thanks Tom) and they were at
zero. So I added a 5ml booster dose of pmdd which brought the level up to
5ppm, as per Tom's advice. I will keep you posted!

thanks again,
brent

Keep adding more NO3 about once every 2-3 days. Bring it up to 10ppm
and then see how long it takes to drop to zero. Write that time down.

Next test your PO4. It's likely runnign at zero also unless you have
PO4 in your tap water. If so, you'll need to add some PO4.
I use KH2PO4 which you can get at hydroponic's places. You can also
use Fleet Enima's also which is mainly sodium phosphate etc. The small
amount of sodium doesn't matter since you only need a small amount of
PO4.
H3PO3, phosphoric acid also works, sold in 30% solutions. 2-3 drops of
the eneima or the H3PO4 2-3x a week should do it.
Now test your NO3's after starting the PO4 dosing.
See a difference?
If you are under 0.2ppm of PO4 now and you start teasting how long it
takes for the NO3 to be removed, then do the same thing when adding
the PO4, you should see a large increase in NO3 uptake.

At 10ppm of NO3 the sword should green up but it might take a few days
etc.

PO4 will make your tank pearl like crazy if you have good plant
density, good CO2/lighting/NO3 and traces etc.
PO4 uptake rates run from 0.1ppm to 0.4ppm a day. NO3 run about
2-5ppm. My tanks run at about 4ppm a day. If you do not add PO4 or
it's less than or at 0.2ppm etc that rate will be cut in 1/2 perhaps
more.

Regards,
Tom Barr