Nitrates going down in a new tank without WC?

[DiscoHobbit]

Ive started my 3rd tank and ive encountered something thats never happened to me before. I did my cycle, ended up with 0.25 ammonia and 80 nitrates (nitrates hanna checker verified). So i went on to do a WC of about 70 percent, which brought my nitrates down to 20.

This was a week ago. Since then ive added a rainfordi, a firefish and 2 small black storm clowns.

Today i decided to do another test to check if my ammonia was still in check and it was indeed zero. No surprises there. However, my nitrates are down to 11 and im scratching my head on how this is possible as in a fairly new tank there probably arent a lot of nitrate converting bacteria yet?

Its a 25 gallon tank btw!

 

[griss]

Interesting. I’m thinking their had to be a testing error with one of the theee tests.

 

[kharmaguru]

Nitrites can show up as nitrates on a test. I think Habib even said so somewhere...

 

[DiscoHobbit]

Interesting. I’m thinking their had to be a testing error with one of the theee tests.

thats what i thought as well, however the hanna tube did turn more red the first time, and since hanna is foolproof... i dunnow

 

[DiscoHobbit]

Nitrites can show up as nitrates on a test. I think Habib even said so somewhere...

this might be it actually then