Ammonia testing query

[assad319]

So I have been cycling my tank for about 6 weeks now. I have been testing the water every other day or so and over time I have seen the nitrite rise and fall, Nitrate rise and Ammonia go down to zero (at least that's what I was reading) I have been using a Red Sea Ammonia testing kit and to me it was fairly clear to be showing a result of 0.

I thought I would take a sample of water to the fish retailer so put some water in a rather old plastic bottle. It took about 39 mins to reach the store and when they tested the water they indicated that there is a small trace of ammonia. They were using a Salifert kit and it was reading a colour between 0.15 and 0.25.

They recommend a dose of Dr Tim's which I have put in but I was wondering if using the plastic bottle may have led to the reading of ammonia?

I have tested the water now with both the Salifert and Redsea kits. Salifert is showing <0.15 but to be honest it's not so easy to interpret the colour. The Redsea kit is very very close to the 0 reading.

I'm thinking could the water in the bottle be a cause for the reading in the store??

 

[MrDellimore]

Hey Brother. I am cycling my tank right now as well and using the Red Sea Test kits. I know that line between 0 and .2 is at least for me hard to distinguish between light green and yellowish green.

Was the plastic bottle throughly clean before taking it to the store? I am super new and this so I am not sure how valuable my input would be, but I would think that if somehow some sort of decaying nutrient was in the plastic bottle it could have caused slight elevation of the ammonia.

What did you use over the 6 weeks to spike the Ammonia?

 

[assad319]

Hi bro. The dry rocks I used were a little dirty and so I had ammonia as a result of this and have not actually introduced any source apart from this.