water values

Pete,

I must say you are an abunce of information!! I am so grateful for your undeniable patience in answering everyones questions in the utmost detail!! I want to thank you so much for taking the time to answer (and sometimes answer again and again) questions posted here!!

I have a question about my water conditions. I have asked at my LFS but never found a satisfactory answer yet. 🙁

Here are my water conditions. It is a 55g tank, with a miracle mud filteration.

PH 7.7
PO4 between 0 and 0.1

NH3/NH4 0mg/l

NO3 12.5 mg/l

NO2 < 0.3 mg/l

specific gravity is betwwen 1.022 and 1.021

CO2 (this is a bit confusing to me so I hope I am giving this right) KH it took 8 drops to change from blue to yellow, with a PH of 7.7 I get CO2 of
4 mg/l which is, if I am correct low.

1. how can I get my CO2 up?

2. I have tried everything (even partial water changes) to get the NO3 to be lower than 12.5 mg/l, but no matter what I do I can not get it down. Any ideas? (this is where the LFS said, partial water changes, which I did. They than said, test kits have a margin for error and you can only get a correct reading with those expensive digital water readers…. so why sell the kits than? :blink: ) This is why I thougth I would turn to you.

3. Where should I be for ideal specific gravity?

Trulyshy :blush: (aka Christine)