sixty_reefer
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On a different thread we where discussing ways to test for improving testing in our hobby more in particular nitrogen and phosphorus, those kind of testing that only large labs can do at the moment.
During the discussion I suggested testing the sand bed, this is where I believe most nutrients get trapped, it is only logical to start from there to try and find alternative testing, I suggested doing similar testing like they do in farming, where organic nitrogen and phosphorus get tested before being able to be released into plants etc…
I’m here to share on what I’ve stumbled with while suggesting this alternative. It seems that a different route was chosen and I’d like to explore this one further.
test 1 on nitrates on my sand bed.
test 1:
I’ve tested the water in my system on the vial to the left, middle vial was sand from my tank and Ro water and vial to the right was only to determine nitrates in my ro.
conclusions: the small amounts of sand that you see on the middle vial released 10ppm of nitrates.
although you may be thinking that my test kits could be unreliable in freshwater (my kit can be used in salt and fresh) I decided that I needed to know more and executed test 2 and 3 in a different manner.
test 2:
test 3:
test 2 and test 3 were all made with tank water leaving no chances that the test kit is not reading well, my idea was to determine the tank water residual and subtract it from the sand + tank water residual.
My surprise is that as more sand I add, the more the concentration of nitrates or phosphates increase, making it fairly difficult to determine how much phosphates and nitrates are really trapped in my sand bed if I was to add more water to my tank water the result would be the opposite and reduce the residual.
in addition test 1 and 3 have different residual due to different amounts of sand, wend testing with the same amount of sand residual is always consistent.
This brings out some thoughts to me that probably won’t make any sense to many.
My thoughts is, if residual nitrates and phosphates trapped on the sand bed are much higher than the residual on the water column would that be the reason for Cyanobacteria, dinoflagellates, diatoms and nuisance algae to cover this surfaces and feed on all those trapped nutrients?
does this explain why some folks get a spike in nutrients after disturbing the sand bed?
what’s your thoughts on this crazy observation?
is it possible that aragonite sand or rock being able to interfere with the test kit results?
will the test kit used just be testing nitrates or nitrates-nitrogen?
During the discussion I suggested testing the sand bed, this is where I believe most nutrients get trapped, it is only logical to start from there to try and find alternative testing, I suggested doing similar testing like they do in farming, where organic nitrogen and phosphorus get tested before being able to be released into plants etc…
I’m here to share on what I’ve stumbled with while suggesting this alternative. It seems that a different route was chosen and I’d like to explore this one further.
test 1 on nitrates on my sand bed.
test 1:
I’ve tested the water in my system on the vial to the left, middle vial was sand from my tank and Ro water and vial to the right was only to determine nitrates in my ro.
conclusions: the small amounts of sand that you see on the middle vial released 10ppm of nitrates.
although you may be thinking that my test kits could be unreliable in freshwater (my kit can be used in salt and fresh) I decided that I needed to know more and executed test 2 and 3 in a different manner.
test 2:
test 3:
test 2 and test 3 were all made with tank water leaving no chances that the test kit is not reading well, my idea was to determine the tank water residual and subtract it from the sand + tank water residual.
My surprise is that as more sand I add, the more the concentration of nitrates or phosphates increase, making it fairly difficult to determine how much phosphates and nitrates are really trapped in my sand bed if I was to add more water to my tank water the result would be the opposite and reduce the residual.
in addition test 1 and 3 have different residual due to different amounts of sand, wend testing with the same amount of sand residual is always consistent.
This brings out some thoughts to me that probably won’t make any sense to many.
My thoughts is, if residual nitrates and phosphates trapped on the sand bed are much higher than the residual on the water column would that be the reason for Cyanobacteria, dinoflagellates, diatoms and nuisance algae to cover this surfaces and feed on all those trapped nutrients?
does this explain why some folks get a spike in nutrients after disturbing the sand bed?
what’s your thoughts on this crazy observation?
is it possible that aragonite sand or rock being able to interfere with the test kit results?
will the test kit used just be testing nitrates or nitrates-nitrogen?
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