Ammonia and Nitrate Tests

Conducting regular ammonia and nitrate tests on your home aquariums is very important, especially before you add fish to the water. If the ammonia or nitrate levels are too high, the fish could be affected in a negative way, such as negative reproduction or death to adult fish.

To conduct an ammonia test you need ammonia bottles #1 and #2, a test tube, pipette, and your tank with water in it. First you rinse the tube out with water from your tank in order to conduct an accurate test. Then you fill it up with 5 ml of tank water. Next, you add 8 drops each of ammonia bottles #1 and #2. (Holding each bottle upside down ensures all the drop sizes to be the same.) Then you swirl the liquid and wait five minutes to determine the color from the card in your ammonia test kit.

Conducting a nitrate test is a little different. You'll need nitrate bottles #1 and #2, a test tube, water from your tank, and a pipette. You need to rinse your test tube and fill it to 5 ml just like you did for the ammonia test. Next you'll add ten drops of nitrate #1 and swirl it together. Next you'll shake nitrate #2 for 30 seconds then add ten drops of that into your tube. Swirl the tube for one minute then wait five minutes to see the color on the card.