Sodium nitrite turned to nitrate

[pagalparinda]

The seller who sent me this has made a mistake, instead of Nitrite it's nitrate turning up in every test. I purchased test kit offline. It is pretty good stuff. The seller tested the strip infront of me in his acquarium and nitrite was showing as 1mg per litre. In my test, it should have shown 10mg per litre but showed below 1 mg/Litre.

Method I used for testing. made distilled water at home (2 Litre). Poured the water in two big size clean cup as 1 Liter in each. Then measured 5 g of SN using precision scale. poured it in one of them and stirred the water using glass rod (clean). took 2 ml water out of other cup and threw it off. Then took another 2 ml out of 1st cup having water mixed with SN. dropped it in other cup containing 998 ml of water and again mixed it using another glass rod (clean). then tested it and it turned as 1mg per liter. the batch was around 2 years old. and everything had already clumped together. Didnt want to take any action on seller to suprress this purchase. I believe CO method is good

Edit: correction I used 5g to put in 1st cup as against previously mentioned 5mg (this 5mg mentioning was a mistake I now corrected). Thanks Dawnfang for pointing this so quickly.

 

[Dawnfang]

I don't know if I'm missing something or my math is off but,

You are using a 5 milligram/Litre solution of SN which (5mg/L) and then diluting 2 millilitres of that into 1 Litre of water, which would make the final solution 0.01 milligrams per litre (0.01mg/L), so the fact your test kit is picking up nitrite at all should be a good sign.

You need to use way bigger concentrations if you want an accurate test. Assuming your test kit measures between 5mg/L and 30mg/L you should aim for a 15mg/L solution, not 0.01mg/L

 

[pagalparinda]

I don't know if I'm missing something or my math is off but,

You are using a 5 milligram/Litre solution of SN which (5mg/L) and then diluting 2 millilitres of that into 1 Litre of water, which would make the final solution 0.01 milligrams per litre (0.01mg/L), so the fact your test kit is picking up nitrite at all should be a good sign.

You need to use way bigger concentrations if you want an accurate test. Assuming your test kit measures between 5mg/L and 30mg/L you should aim for a 15mg/L solution, not 0.01mg/L

By mistake I mentioned 5mg instead of 5gm. Thnx for pointing it to me...

 

[meer]

Try a blood test?

 

[pagalparinda]

Try a blood test?

Did that 2 days back. Results were not conclusive. Thus bought test strips. Oops! We ran into some problems. Please try again later. More error details may be in the browser console.

 

[Dawnfang]

By mistake I mentioned 5mg instead of 5gm. Thnx for pointing it to me...

Well, with those numbers you're absolutely right that it should produce a solution of 10mg/L
Either the seller scammed you, or it was improperly sealed and has degraded to about 10% purity.

Say you had it stored in a jar, you could try to scrape whatever is in the bottom of the container and test that. It stands to reason that whatever's at the bottom might have been less exposed to oxygen tho this is a longshot and may not be applicable.
Speaking of which, do you mind if I ask you how you stored it? So that I may "learn from your mistakes" so to speak lol. Thanks in advance, and I hope you find an alternative that suits you o7