The Puffer Forum

My SG is at 1.018 after this last water change today and I just tested my water. When tested for ammonia at 5 min it looked more inbetween the 0ppm and .25ppm for the freshwater card. After about 8-10 min it matched identicle to the 0ppm for the sw card(the exact same Lbrown hazey color.) Any suggestions as to what i should make of this?

Read the SW chart - FW chart is only really useable for ammonia up to about 1.006 I've found.

Is there a reason it takes more then the 5 min it states on the box?

I try to follow the times exactly. Like a pregnancy test you might het a false positive if you let it continue "working" after the stated time.

so if you have a brackish tank with salinity over 0.06, you should use a SW test kit?

i have been slowly bringing mine up, and saw amm test results at 0.25 using api FW ammonia test.

but all other tests are fine. nitrite 0, nitrate <10, and ph 7.6

i've been trying to get 0 amm, but maybe its the test result?

It's the same test kit, but you should switch to reading the SW chart.

I can switch to useing the sw test card no problem my ? is why the difference in time. At 5 min looks inbetween .0 and .25 on the fw card and after like 10 min its identicle to 0 on the sw card. My tank recently was re-cycled and im just wandering if im getting stability problems or if im just getting to close to sw to and should switch cards and the time it takes from what it seems?

Your tank is into the marine range so follow the marine instructions etc.