Has anyone used the Hannah Nitrate Photometer?

[KYeasting]

I just figure that if one of my fish gets sick, I want to be able to rule out everything possible. Keeping nitrates low is just better for the fish -- higher isn't bad, but I try and do the best I can for them. Obviously, they live with 0 nitrate in the wild, and I have (in a roundabout way, of course I don't catch them) taken them from the wild and stuck them in a box. I might as well make their experience as positive as possible!

Just read that post... I'm afraid I have to disagree with that statement. Nitrate is present in the wild, in measurable levels. I've done a few projects that required me to collect water samples from different bodies of water and to test them (water health project). Nitrates are there. They don't get very high unless it's a choked body of water. It's nitrite and ammonia fish never see in the wild, except in a case where humans mess with the water. If we introduce materials that kill bacteria off in confined bodies of water, we could crash the system and kill everything.

 

[justonemoretank]

Oh, okay. I was just going by what most folks say who collect their own native fish. Mostly, I have read that they find no nitrate where they collect. It could be that the levels are too low to be measured by the typical test (especially dip strips, which I imagine would mostly be used due to ease of use), or that the places they're collecting from happen to have none, while other areas have some. I guess I'd have to book an Amazon expedition for myself to find out for sure, but I'll still stick with as low as possible!

 

[KYeasting]

To be fair, we ran the tests with titrations, not drip tests. Those drip tests are rather inaccurate in my opinion. The drop size isn't exactly the same every time, so there's no way to assure you're getting the same amount of chemical every time. Running a test with a large water sample in a beaker with a chemical indicator and adding the second chemical with a burette overheard is far more accurate. When we hit a point where the chemical completely reacted with the item in question in the water, the indicator would change color and we would stop our test. By knowing a bit about the chemical in the burette, the volume used, and the volume of the sample, we could calculate the item in question. Plus we would use the meter like the one you're looking at. The machine could get us down into the ppm range, we have another that will put us down in the ppb range (not for use by students, research only). The machine can be set up to run at any wavelength (within a reasonable range) and would spit out a number. That number would let us use Bragg's Law to determine the concentration of the chemical in the water.

 

[justonemoretank]

Ah, now I understand why I'm an English major. LOL but you're right, your process was probably much more inclined to produce more specific, true results.

 

[KYeasting]

And you understand why I don't do chemistry! Good call on staying away from the chemistry field. Too much memorization, not enough thinking, learning and application there.