Cherie cook
Cherbear
For many weeks I’ve been disturbed, confused and heartbroken as most of my corals have slowly but steadily melted away into nothingness. Corals that I’ve had since before I moved from NY to CO are history. Corals that I got from multiple online weekend live sales...toast. Beautiful beasts from several great vendors including Cherry Corals, WWC, Aqua SD and Liveaquaria..and many more..gone.
Based on my testing and advice from helpful R2R members it was decided that the problem was low nutrients and high alk. So I worked hard on increasing those nitrate and phosphate numbers, decreasing alk. Adding nitrate supplements and increasing feeding.
Luckily someone, somewhere mentioned ICP testing...so a sample was sent off. But those results take weeks. In the meantime I continued to add nitrate supplements and feed 2-3 times a day.
Imagine my surprise when my ICP test revealed a nitrate of 122! And that was on sample sent 5-6 weeks before...since then I’d been adding nitrate and feeding lots, trying to get those numbers up! Turns out it was a bad Nyos test kit. It showed present but consistently low nitrate. A basic salifert test kit at my LFS came up greater than 100..probably WAY greater than 100.
So if yours truly would’ve taken the simple step of double checking that low nitrate with a different test kit...all this might’ve been avoided. Don’t that beat all!! My only defense is that, based on my research, Nyos is a top of the line test kit for nitrate. And well it may be, but I won’t make that mistake again, dangit!
Based on my testing and advice from helpful R2R members it was decided that the problem was low nutrients and high alk. So I worked hard on increasing those nitrate and phosphate numbers, decreasing alk. Adding nitrate supplements and increasing feeding.
Luckily someone, somewhere mentioned ICP testing...so a sample was sent off. But those results take weeks. In the meantime I continued to add nitrate supplements and feed 2-3 times a day.
Imagine my surprise when my ICP test revealed a nitrate of 122! And that was on sample sent 5-6 weeks before...since then I’d been adding nitrate and feeding lots, trying to get those numbers up! Turns out it was a bad Nyos test kit. It showed present but consistently low nitrate. A basic salifert test kit at my LFS came up greater than 100..probably WAY greater than 100.
So if yours truly would’ve taken the simple step of double checking that low nitrate with a different test kit...all this might’ve been avoided. Don’t that beat all!! My only defense is that, based on my research, Nyos is a top of the line test kit for nitrate. And well it may be, but I won’t make that mistake again, dangit!
Anyone who's been in the hobby for a while has likely run into an inaccurate test kit or two (I certainly have). Sucks, but it happens...
