No, last water change was 10% 3 days ago just to remove debris, 20-30% a few days before that. It's just weird that the results seemed consistent, and I checked again and my levels are still the same.
I do rinse my vials, no worries there! I use DI water because it makes me feel a bit better even if it's a pain to find. I can't get any ammonia reading whatsoever now so I'm not gonna worry too much, but I'd expect there to be a rise in my nitrates if it was the cycle, no? I have two small pothos plants but they aren't recieving light at this time so I highly doubt they took care of things that quick. I've never had a cycle fail on me yet which was my first concern, but I guess it was just a false alarm.
The tank is a 40B with three young bichirs, each under 5in. So with daily feeding, the load definitely isn't the lightest. The pothos is the only plant there since it's just a growout tank. Thought I'd add that this tank completed its cycle about 3 months ago, the media I used was 5 months old.
The test definitely isn't past the use by date, but I do occasionally get false readings or readings that don't make sense, so I'm definitely considering switching brands to see if something suits me better. I've made it a habit to shake the bottles so I don't believe that was the case, but with the readings I got anything is possible. Everything seems totally normal now in all 4 of my tanks, still not sure how I got such a wacky reading. Thanks for the thoughts and opinions guys, I'll eventually get the hang of everything.
