Tropic Marin Nitrogen Test Kits

If you spend all your time reading about aquariums (which you do, because you're here), you see references to nitrate levels all the time. Why? Well, it's a good indication of how well your aquarium is processing nitrogenous waste. It's also a compound that is much less toxic than the forms of nitrogen it comes from. In talking about nitrates, we've put the cart before the horse, or maybe a more relatable phrase would be the trailer in front of the truck. Regardless, let's delve into nitrogen a bit.

Nitrogen testing in all its forms is important because your fish and inverts eat, and then produce waste, this waste includes ammonia (and larger compounds that break down into ammonia, and a lot of it. Decomposing food and any other organic material will also release ammonia at some point, so it’s in your tank one way or another. Ammonia is quite toxic (but makes a killer smelling salt and is good for cleaning windows). Without getting too deep into the weeds here, ammonia gets broken down by specific bacteria in the presence of oxygen and gets turned into nitrite. Nitrite is still fairly toxic, but guess what, it gets broken down by bacteria (plus oxygen) too and gets turned into nitrate. Nitrate is the least toxic of these forms of nitrogen and is acceptable, even desirable in low levels in your aquatic display. Nitrate can also be broken down (into nitrogen gas), but those bacteria live in no-oxygen environments which is a difficult task in most aquariums. This is why we do water changes, to remove as much fish waste as we can before it breaks down, and to dilute the amount of nitrate in the system. Nitrate can also be utilized by plants and algae.

The bacteria that break down ammonia and nitrite will naturally colonize a new tank and its filter system, and you can add a bacterial kick start like Dr. Tims One and Only to make this process much faster. How to tell if that's worked? You need to test for ammonia before you add any fish or inverts to your system, and you should test for ammonia again after adding any new stock to an established aquarium. Tropic Marin as you covered here with their NH4/NH3 test kit. It works with both fresh and salt water and is super easy to use.

Shake the dropper bottle, rinse out the glass test cuvette with tap water and then with tank water. Fill the cuvette with 5ml of tank water using the included syringe. Add 10 drops of reagent A and then 5 drops of reagent B and let it sit for 1 minute. Add a spoonful of the powder reagent C, shake it up and start a 5-minute timer. Then just compare the color to the color chart! If your test is somewhat between colors, split the difference! Be sure to rinse the cuvette out thoroughly with tap water when you're done.

Once testing of your new tank shows that ammonia is within acceptable levels or gone entirely, you're doing this right. The other test you should be doing after the ammonia test is checking for nitrite. This is also a test you should be doing after adding new fish or changing feeding schedules. Luckily, Tropic Marin has you covered here too with their NO2/NO3 test kit, which you're also going to use when we get to testing for nitrate; one kit, two tests.

There's going to be some consistent themes here. Start by shaking the dropper bottles well. Rinse out the cuvette again (tap water, then tank water), fill the cuvette with exactly 5ml using the syringe. Add 5 drops of reagent A, then stopper the cuvette and shake it for a sec. Then 2 drops of reagent C, stopper it and shake it again. Let it sit for 3 minutes and place it on the white circle of the included nitrite color card and compare the color in daylight by looking down through the cuvette and moving the sample on the color card until the colors match. That's your number.

Nitrate is a test you also need to do when you initially set up, but it's also a test that should be part of your normal testing and tank maintenance schedule. A spike in nitrate can show you there's an abnormal nutrient load in your tank for some reason, maybe that's a fish that passed away, or a new food that breaks down differently. Whatever the reason, you'll need to work that out and then do some large water changes until you get nitrates under control. The nitrate portion of your Tropic Marin NO2/NO3 test kit is just as easy as the nitrite test.

You can guess where to start; shake the dropper bottles and rinse the cuvette, first with tap water, then a few times with tank water. Fill it with exactly 5ml of aquarium water with the included syringe. Then add ten drops of reagent A, stopper the cuvette and shake it briefly. The bottle of reagent B has got to be seriously shaken right before you use it, so hold that thang sideways and shake it like a Polaroid picture for like 30 seconds. Then add 10 drops of it to the cuvette, stopper it and shake it briefly. Let it sit for 3 minutes and add 4 drops of reagent C and shake it up again. Wait three more minutes, take out the stopper and put it on the white circle of the nitrate card. Looking down through the cuvette, move the sample on the color card until the cuvette and the card match exactly, and that's your number.

All Tropic Marin Test Kits come with really easy to understand instructions, so don't worry about remembering these. A new aquarium needs all three tests daily until ammonia and nitrite disappear and nitrate drops to under 5ppm. Fish and inverts should never be added before this. After this, Ammonia and nitrite readings can slow down to weekly, and start doing them again daily when you add fish or change foods. Keep testing nitrate every day until you start getting very stable and acceptable readings, then this can slow down to once or twice a week as part of your water change schedule.

All testing should be done at the same time of day; the time away from the last feeding can shift all the nitrogen test readings. A pro-tip that many people either don't know about or disregard is to keep excellent records of your testing results, water sources, as well as your stocking and feeding history. When you look back through these later, you can gain a new level of understanding as it pertains to your aquarium and how it adapts to change. Now go forth, get yourself some Tropic Marin Test Kits from your local fish store and start testing!