Fresh Saltwater mix showing 50+ppm on Red Sea test kit

[reefingformysons]

Hi guys,

So i recently started seeing sky rocket nitrates in the my DT.

After upgrading the filtration and adding a Tunze slimmer aswell as a complete clean of back chambers and replacement of phosguard and denitrate following by 2 50% water changes I was still getting 50+ results for nitrate in the tank using Red Sea Nitrate & Nitrite test kit.

today as proceeding to mix the batch for the third 50% WC I thought let me just check what the nitrate is showing on this new mix.

To my surprise it showed up at 50+ PPM!

What on earth could be happening?

Dodgy bag of salt? Dodgy test kit? Any hell
Would be great.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Might be a faulty test kit, or a small amount of nitrite (can read as a huge amount of nitrate).

What sort of water did you use to make the new salt water?

 

[reefingformysons]

I tested twice yesterday I. The morning the nitrite showed 0 then later that evening showing as 0.05-0.1 but my nitrates have been high before that. I tested them on a hanna checker which is how I initially knew and they did show 55.6 but then I ran out of reagent and popped to my LFS and they only had this Red Sea kit as they ran out of stock on the reagent.

I’m using RODI water from my LFS

 

[reefingformysons]

Might be a faulty test kit, or a small amount of nitrite (can read as a huge amount of nitrate).

What sort of water did you use to make the new salt water?

I just did a nitrite test and it did show low levels 0.05

 

[Reefer500]

Salt brand?

 

[reefingformysons]

Salt brand?

Supposedly ocean reef pro

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

It's possible there's enough nitrite in the RO/DI to be an issue for nitrate testing. Did you measure TDS on it?

I'd try testing the RO/DI for nitrate or nitrite, if you have any remaining.

 

[reefingformysons]

It's possible there's enough nitrite in the RO/DI to be an issue for nitrate testing. Did you measure TDS on it?

I'd try testing the RO/DI for nitrate or nitrite, if you have any remaining.

No I haven’t but the Red Sea nitrite result would back that up since there seems to be a small trace reading of nitrite.

My RODI system should arrive this week so should be able to just make my own water soon but don’t have any left over from the mix.

I may just do a water change and see if the overall results for the tank nitrate levels get low?