9:00am tests, run in very good light, with everything that should be shaken vigorously done so.
Ph 6.0 It is at the first color on the chart absolutely.
Ammonia .5 to 1.0 (hard to tell, perhaps a bit closer to 1.0)
Nitrite can't tell for sure - could be 2 or 5. It seems lighter than last night, but that could be the daylight.
Nitrate 5
Ran everything twice, same result.
So yesterday morning the Ph was 6.4 to 6.6 and today it's 6.0 (unquestionably).
The ammonia seems about the same.
The nitrite doesn't seem so intensely purple.
The nitrate hasn't changed.
Going to go give it one more Nitrate test, after agitating the second bottle to the extreme, just to make sure of that being accurate.
The only thing that has changed is that I put a dirty filter from the other tank into this tank yesterday afternoon. But I don't see how that would change the Ph. And if the microbes were seeding and gobbling nitrite, I would expect to see the nitrate go up?
Unless the plants were eating it? But how much can the plants actually use that quickly? (The substrate couldn't be bonding to it, could it?)
Hmm, one more question. If I had put Prime or Amquel in the water when I was setting up the tank, to take care of the chlorine to chloramine, it would neutralize any Nitrites/Nitrates in there at that time. Could that be masking the results? Have decided to take a sample to the aquarium shop for the guy to test for me (as he said he would - hopefully not with a test strip). Depending on what he says, I may empty and re-fill the tank today, get it to temperature, and put three of the tiny baby corys in there to start things over. At least the filter should have gotten SOME bacteria going by now. And the "dirty" filter from the other tank is still in there.