A week or two ago, Dodgefreak published some results of his nitrate tests in his planted tank. It was interesting results and I will post a link to his thread if I can find it (anyone feel free to help me out). I ran out of ammonia absorber for my turtle tank so I got to thinking that this would be a good time for another experiment. One thing I forgot was to run a control batch. You know what happens there (not much) but the results were interesting still. I had planned to map the consumption of nitrates through the course of a week and then plot the results on a chart. My interest is whether nitrate consumption is linear or a decreasing exponential function. At this point, it is not derivable but the results are very interesting as you will see.
The source water is as follows:
Ammonia .5
Nitrites .5
Nitrates 15
pH 6.6
The experiment began at 9:00pm 10-2-06. The results were tested 27 hours later at 12:00am 10-4-06. The first test vessel is 1.6 gallons of source water with densely packed aquatic plants. They were exposed to approximately 12 hours of diffused sun light. The second test vessel is 1.6 gallons of source water with one sprig of phothos containing seven developed leaves and a root system that is 1.5 months old. It was exposed to 6.5 hours of artificial light split into two sessions of three hours and three and a half hours. The artificial light was supplied by two fluorescent aquarium/plant lights.
Aquatic plants after 27hrs with 12hrs of light:
Ammonia 0.0
Nitrites 1.0
Nitrates 5.0
pH 6.4
Sprig of phothos with 6.5hrs of light:
Ammonia 0.0
Nitrites .25
Nitrates aprox. zero
pH 6.6
These results were totally unexpected. I do not have a source of bad water right now but I will be generating some shortly so that I can repeat this experiment. I will try to eliminate the some of the variables. I will also run a control group.
Of course, the question of nitrate consumption being linear or exponential is still unanswered. If the aquatic plants tank is zero tomorrow, it will still be inconclusive. If there are testable nitrate levels it will, at best, suggest that nitrate consumption is exponential.
The more people that repeat this experiment, the better the empirical evidence will be. Maybe we can start to shed some of the internet myth that plagues our hobby.
The source water is as follows:
Ammonia .5
Nitrites .5
Nitrates 15
pH 6.6
The experiment began at 9:00pm 10-2-06. The results were tested 27 hours later at 12:00am 10-4-06. The first test vessel is 1.6 gallons of source water with densely packed aquatic plants. They were exposed to approximately 12 hours of diffused sun light. The second test vessel is 1.6 gallons of source water with one sprig of phothos containing seven developed leaves and a root system that is 1.5 months old. It was exposed to 6.5 hours of artificial light split into two sessions of three hours and three and a half hours. The artificial light was supplied by two fluorescent aquarium/plant lights.
Aquatic plants after 27hrs with 12hrs of light:
Ammonia 0.0
Nitrites 1.0
Nitrates 5.0
pH 6.4
Sprig of phothos with 6.5hrs of light:
Ammonia 0.0
Nitrites .25
Nitrates aprox. zero
pH 6.6
These results were totally unexpected. I do not have a source of bad water right now but I will be generating some shortly so that I can repeat this experiment. I will try to eliminate the some of the variables. I will also run a control group.
Of course, the question of nitrate consumption being linear or exponential is still unanswered. If the aquatic plants tank is zero tomorrow, it will still be inconclusive. If there are testable nitrate levels it will, at best, suggest that nitrate consumption is exponential.
The more people that repeat this experiment, the better the empirical evidence will be. Maybe we can start to shed some of the internet myth that plagues our hobby.