hmmm i just got a Hagen N03 kit and my nitrates look pretty high. It seems
to read 50 mg/l (ppm right?). One thing i noticed in the pamphlet is that
it says nitrate levels aren't toxic till they hit 110 mg/l. I always
thought nitrates were supposed to be WAY lower in order to be safe??

Well i started some massive water changes... took maybe 40% water out today.
The test still seems to say around 50 mg/l nitrates. (the colour scale is
pretty wide.. they only show levels for 5, 10 , 20, 50, 110 mg/l). I
thought it would've gone down after the intial water change but i guess i'll
have to keep doing partial changes everyday to see results??

Darwin


"Chuck Gadd" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 06 Nov 2002 05:25:17 GMT, "kush" wrote:

I would REALLY prefer not to have to admit that I've ever had a nitrate
problem that bad, but I promise you that you can burn holes in anubias.

Well, I've got (or at least had) nitrates around 40-50ppm, and the
anubias didn't show any sign of problems.

In any research I've done regarding nutrient deficiency and toxicity,
I've never found anything that suggested that high nitrates cause
necrosis. Ammonia toxicity may cause necrosis, but I'd expect it
would cause bigger more obvious problems with any fish in the tank.


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