possible for coral to open up with ...

[hammy]

hello reefer ,

er do most of u all do weekly testing faithfully using reliable testkit or do weekly testing with ur eyes -- meaning as long as ur system is doing fine u are fine with it ...ie coral open big big , fishes are happy swimming leisurely ...

i have prob with my sera testkit ... sometime wonder is it spoil or just tt my water is not good ... it give no3 reading like 80--200mg/l but my coral are opening really big and i have only 2 clownfishes in my 2 feet tank set up lo ...though coral stacking really pack ...

or is it possible for coral to open up with reading like 200mg/l or my testkit spoil??

[ryz]

some corals are very tolerant to high levels of nitrate.. however 200mg/l is really outrageous... your test kit might not be very accurate, but I think it is highly possible that you have high levels of nitrates as well... get a better test kit and test again... in the mean time change 20% of water everyweek... ur filtration very important as well..

[hammy]

haha ... i do my 20% water changes every 3 days ... my coral like hammer , sunflower , bubble and elegance are doing fine too ... and my algae in FUGE are doing crazy too

argh ... hate nitrate !!!

[hammy]

oh i have a sump same size with my main tank ... using prizm skimmer , ehiem 2213 and live rock er maybe like 15kg or more !!!pack with rock ... coralline doing fine too ...sump have a DSB 15cm deep like tt

[ryz]

u have many fishes? how big is ur tank? if your nitrate so high suggests that your filtartion not very efficient, especially your skimmer, not able to skim stuff out b4 they break down into ammonia, nitrite then nitrate. also check your water suppply, might have nitrates in tap water. buy a reliable test kit and test again.

[hammy]

thanks ryz ...

my tap water's nitrate level is 15mg/l... 2 feet and have only 2 fishes ... only 2 realtively small clownfishes ...

coral

2 hammers

i jewel

4 clams

sunflower

green mushies (8 frag)

orange yuma(2 frag)

1 purple sea fan

orange sponge

star polyp

4 tubeworms

1 orange sea fan( like burger one)

3 skunk shrimp ,3 snails ... all in my 2 feet tank ... is it too much ??

[tigershark]

I've used sera nitrate test kit b4. quite aqurate.... I've compare it with tetra & aquarium phamaceuticals test kit... all show the same result. the trick is when you add the "powder", must make sure that the powder is well mixed..

[tineng]

yeap...me too, i find sera test kit to be quite ok....but never did test beyond 80mg/l because IMHO, nitrate at that level is way too high....measuring will be quite pointless...

[patrick123]

I got a different opinion about Sera test kit. I tested it on my tank and shows 10mg/l on nitrate. After that, I tested the water with Salifert test kit and shows 1mg/l. So which one should I believe? I think Salifert should be more accurate.

I was told that Sera test kit result need to be divided by 4. Is this true?

[tineng]

dunno le, when my sera test kit shown 10mg/l, i'll definately get ditoms....but when it shows 0, i get not ditom.....

although I remeber readling from the results in a german site seems to show that Salifert is the better then Sera, but suprisingly Red Sea seems to beat Salifert....i'll see if i can dig out the link and post it here....

[FuEl]

Sera test kits are obsolete..