Nitrates in Axolotl tank

[maddyb9903]

Hello all! i am just wondering if having absolutely 0 nitrates in your tank will harm your axolotl. I have no ammonia, no nitrites , and Ph. is 7.5 ish but i have no nitrates? What does that mean, and could it be hurting my axolotl that there’s no nitrates in the water?

 

[EasternRomioi3]

0 nitrates is a sign of an uncycled tank OR you just did a good water change. There should always be some nitrates present in a fully cycled tank. Everything else looks fine. All I know is when the nitrates are too high, axolotls begin to have adverse effects, but I am not familiar with what those effects specifically are. If your tank is cycled and you have 0 nitrates and haven't done a water change today, then my next question is, do you have plants? Plants eat up nitrates.

 

[maddyb9903]

0 nitrates is a sign of an uncycled tank OR you just did a good water change. There should always be some nitrates present in a fully cycled tank. Everything else looks fine. All I know is when the nitrates are too high, axolotls begin to have adverse effects, but I am not familiar with what those effects specifically are. If your tank is cycled and you have 0 nitrates and haven't done a water change today, then my next question is, do you have plants? Plants eat up nitrates.

Thanks for your help! I did a pretty decent water change yesterday so maybe that’s it?

 

[cro117]

do you have any plants or sand? if you have any plants, its not unusual for them to strip the remaining nitrate in an appropriately stocked tank, and the same goes for thick though sand (doesn't even need to be overly thick in a stagnant tank.) also, please don't take offense at this, im sure you know what your doing, but it's easy for new hobbies to mess up nitrate tests. bottle number 2 and the completed mixture has to be shaken for like 15 mins (im exaggerating) but you also do have to let it all set for 10 mins. again, im sure it's not the case, it's just something easy to overlook that should be brought up from time to time.

 

[JoshBA]

Hello all! i am just wondering if having absolutely 0 nitrates in your tank will harm your axolotl. I have no ammonia, no nitrites , and Ph. is 7.5 ish but i have no nitrates? What does that mean, and could it be hurting my axolotl that there’s no nitrates in the water?

To answer your question: no, zero nitrates would not be an issue.

Keep in mind that these test kits are quite crude. When you're dealing with concentrations in ppm, etc., 'drops' of reactants is not going to be super accurate. You may have a super low concentration of nitrate or expired reagents in your test kit. It'd be pretty hard for natural turnover of nitrates (e.g., plants, or anaerobic denitrification) to completely eliminate them from an emanating source, but your kit may simply not be sensitive enough for low concentrations.