43 Nitrite Test Kit
Description
This article is from the Beginning Fishkeeping FAQ, by Thomas Narten with numerous contributions by others.
43 Nitrite Test Kit
You might want to get one of these; nitrite kits are cheap ($5-10) and
are useful in the same circumstances where an ammonia test is useful.
The only time a nitrite kit provides information that an ammonia kit
can't is while testing for completion of the second phase of the
nitrogen cycle (see the CYCLING SECTION). As in the case for ammonia,
if your test kits detects nitrite, your biological filter is not
working adequately. Once a tank has cycled, nitrite kits are pretty
much useless. (If the bio filter in an established tank isn't working,
both ammonia and nitrite levels will be elevated.)
Nitrite is an order of magnitude less toxic than ammonia. Thus, one
common saying about tank cycling is: ``if your fish survive the
ammonia spike, they'll probably survive the nitrite spike and the rest
of the cycling process.'' However, even at levels above .5 ppm, fish
become stressed. At 10-20 ppm, concentrations become lethal.
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