Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have the following API nitrate test. What would be the value of a deep dark rich purple? The ammonia and nitrate colorations all go from light to dark so that is how I've been reading my nitrite test. I've read a dark rich purple as 5.0+. But now I'm thinking that the nitrite colors go from light blue to dark purple to red. So a dark rich purple would be 1.0ppm?

It looks to be the "nitrite" test you have.. not the "nitrate".... and a purplish reading is 1.0... the next "cerise" reading is 2.0

Salt to 1ppt will mitigate the effects of nitrite irritation and "brown blood" disease in fish...

My bad, I meant nitrite. Type them both enough and they start mixing.
I get to learn a new color name today! Okay, so then my dark rich purple is 1.0, that makes me feel a lot better. (updating past result chart results)

I knew about the salt, but good to mention it for others. Which brings up another question (they're related). If your tank is salted to 1ppt, when does that change? Does it ever change once it is at that level? Does any of the salt get used by fish or plants or evaporation?

I would figure that it changes with water changes but by how much? Is there a way to test?

Showing us a picture of your test tube would be more descriptive than words...

Many plants will take up salt and will gradually take it all from the system. My DW thought our spinach had grit on it, but was just salt grains sweated onto the leaves.

Sodium it taken up by the plants although some have low requirements. It is the chloride ion which is effective against nitrites. Alternatives are potassium or calcium chloride but they will be depleted.

On the nitrite reading, I've found that it can be hard to tell the true reading when it gets much above 1. I never saw the test tube match the colors on the card above 2. For some reason the nitrite reading seemed to turn funny colors on me while I went through initial cycling on my systems.

I usually count anything that doesn't match 1 or below pretty well as being too dangerous for my comfort with fish in the system.

These were from the first month of my system start up

I still have trout from then, though I did have a few deaths

Here are the results from last night.

Looks like 1 ppm to me. Some salt and go easy on the feed. This is the hard part of cycling, getting past the nitrite spike!
Hang in there.