I want to test foods for Nitrate and Phosphate levels...

[Polymate3D]

Hello

I have seen many articles and links to people testing phosphate levels in there foods...in the US.
I watch BRStv which gives advice on foods...in the US.

I am in the UK and can't get those options, so I want to run a few tests on the different foods I have!

My plan is to use 10cm cube containers I have, and place freshly made saltwater with known values of 0 prior, then place in a amount of each food.

My question is how long should leave them prior to taking some tests?
24 hours, a week?

If anyone has any insight, please let me know. My other thought was to get some saltwater and food and blend them and then leave.

Any help is appreciated!

- Paul

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

This may be helpful, and some of the Chem forum regulars may have more input for you:

Occasionally it's come up that people often test, share, and compare their numbers on nitrate and phosphate tests of their aquarium water, but when talking about feeding, the discussions are much less quantifiable: "Light" "heavy" "a small pinch of this and a fat pinch of that".
For some discussions, quantifying food inputs are probably more useful in understanding how a system is behaving than the leftover NO3 and PO4 a test kit finds in the water.
So for those who want to know but are annoyed by crunching the numbers, here's a calculator aid.

(screenshot)

What you see is the numbers for my system. About 65 gallons, an average daily feeding for my system is around 0.2g of flake, 0.4g of pellets, and a 3g cube of mysis. This works out to about 1.3ppm NO3 and 0.08ppm PO4 inputs as food. This is a pretty light feeding compared to how some other people feed, and my tank gets that on average ~5 days a week. So the weekly average per day is even a bit lower.

Try out the google sheet by clicking the link, and then click (file -> Make a copy) so you edit your own and not the original.



So what's your daily NO3 and PO4 input?

(let me know if it works - I think it should, but I'm not confident.)