This Should Perplex You

[Matthew5664]

As some may know I upgraded my sump, and in doing so I mesured some weird results.

The Nitrate level has droped from upto 10ppm between water changes to about 2ppm. now thats all well and good but.......

The Nitrite level has gone up from 0ppm to about 0.2ppm!!!!?!!?!!??? WTF? the test kits I use are the liquid ones and I can see that its just going pink. the LFS have the same reading of about 0.15ppm

I'm thinking somthing may have died and caused a micro-cycle?

Or the new LR I put in wasn't fully cured?

Or not enough flow through the LR?

What do you think?

 

[Siamese Fighter05]

How long was the Cured LR out of water for?
Even 20 minutes out will cause enough die off to show traces of nitrite for a little while

 

[@ombomb]

flow should be fine as long as it's not less than 10 X, my moneys on the new LR

 

[Matthew5664]

The LR was out for about 25 mins.

It's just it's never happened before, guess I was just lucky.

The turnover of the tank is about X25 so that shoud be ok.

 

[SkiFletch]

Yeah, 25 mins is enough to get dieoff to support what you're describing. Should clear up within a couple days though. Just make sure the nitrite spike doesnt get too out of control and you should be fine