No Nitrates. How is that possible?
 

OK. It's been about a six weeks since my tank cycled. Here are my specs:

65 gallon tank
- 10 Zebra Danios (the cyclers)
- 5 Phantom Tetras
- 4 Dwarf Gouramis
- Clown Pleco (never really see him though)

I am getting a zero reading on nitrate levels. I've used an API strip and the droppers and it's still at zero. How is that possible? I've only done one water change in the past two weeks (about 30% with the gravel cleaning). I checked the expiry and both tests are still good. I even brought a water sample into my LFS and they showed zero across the board.

Any nitrites or ammonia at all?

yea we need more info dude.

Any plants in the tank? Enough plants means no nitrate build up ever. My planted tanks get a nitrate supplement just to keep up with their needs.

Both Ammonia and NitrItes are reading zero also. These were done with API test strips. I'm heading out today to purchase the liquid API Ammonia and NitrIte test kits as they might be a little more accurate. .

I have no live plants in the tank (just a few fakes), but I do have a big piece of driftwood (I don't think that would affect NitrAte levels though).

I know the tank cycled because I recorded the Ammonia and NitrIte spikes (very brief one at that) several weeks ago.

Very strange.

Purchase the master liquid test kit so that you can test the pH, ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. It's less expensive to get all together than purchasing them all separately. Don't bother with the strips. They are generally useless.

My nitrates build up slowly in both my tanks. I've never seen a nitrates reading over 10 ppm in my 48 gallon or over 5 ppm in my 6 gallon. I do regular 30 to 40% water changes though.

Heavily planted tanks use up nitrAtes so low readings I would think would not be uncommon. Elevated nitrAtes are usually associated with infrequent water changes, overstocked tanks, overfeeding ,or all of the above. Regular small weekly water changes in moderately stocked and properly fed aquariums make controlling NitrAtes easy.