My Phosphates,Nitrates,Ammonia showing ZERO?

[mooputingtong]

I have a 3 months old 14 gallon nano tank with heavily stocked livestock. Two clown, one small hippo tang(getting new tank soon), one clown fish and few invertebrates. It is heavily stocked small tank but i strictly do maintenance everyday. I do maintenance by chaning filter every two days, weekly water change 20%, skimmer rated for 40 gallon. I also do not over feed them and target feed reef roid and mysis shrimp or even a chunk of shrimp. Honestly the tank was always showing little nitrates,phosphates for the last 2 months, Its recently showing all zeros on salifert test kit. Is the test kit not accurate? or i just did a good job maintaining tank.

 

[lapin]

Its either a good job or your tests are out of wack. You will know with a comparison test from your LFS or.....

 

[brandon429]

Thank you for this post. I needed a fresh update to the microbiology of cycling thread to highlight why getting a nitrate reading has nothing to do with being cycled. Your large bioload would be dead in 12 hours if you weren't cycled, perfect post.

to cap things off, can you post a full tank picture

These test kits misread. What doesn't misread is seneye ammonia, and you are using po4 and nitrate testers that aren't the seneye version of measurement for those params. you may have nitrate and its not being detected, you might be denitrifying it depending on variables in the tank, but we can make use of the fact a very recently cycled tank still doesn't show nitrate.

 

[mooputingtong]

Its either a good job or your tests are out of wack. You will know with a comparison test from your LFS or.....

i think my test kits are ok but will visit LFS and double check!

 

[mooputingtong]

Thank you for this post. I needed a fresh update to the microbiology of cycling thread to highlight why getting a nitrate reading has nothing to do with being cycled. Your large bioload would be dead in 12 hours if you weren't cycled, perfect post.

to cap things off, can you post a full tank picture

These test kits misread. What doesn't misread is seneye ammonia, and you are using po4 and nitrate testers that aren't the seneye version of measurement for those params. you may have nitrate and its not being detected, you might be denitrifying it depending on variables in the tank, but we can make use of the fact a very recently cycled tank still doesn't show nitrate.

I will post some pics tomorrow

 

[brandon429]

I still use this thread as my own sticky.

nh3 is the only parameter we now measure in saltwater aquarium cycling across thousands of logged cycle starts, this is still a great example of why we don’t need nitrate readings to discern cycle status. variations in production rate, uptake or degassing rate and ability to accurately detect render nitrate readings not required for cycle verification


when nh3 is controlled after known time frames underwater + bacterial source, nitrate is being produced. Whether or not we see that on our kits varies.


he might have had nitrates just after cycle, but we’ve seen zero nitrate cycles as well just thought it was standout that a small/ dense stocked tank produced the sustained low without additives or special arrangements.

 

[Pistondog]

any algae to speak of?
That might be using up nutrients.