Hello, by popular demand I bring you this tutorial... This is a bit rough right now but you can get a general idea on how you can do it. In the future (if i'm still around) i will ask moderators for help with editing it.
Here's how to test your SN! Basically you're going to need the following items...
- An aquarium test kit that tests for nitrite up to 10mg/L. I used this: https://anonym.to/?https://www.jbl.de/en/products/detail/4490/jbl-easytest-6in1 as that's what i was able to find at my local pet store. It is available on amazon and ebay and wherever too. This kit is actually kinda crap, there are better ones (the ones which use reagents) but you'll have to figure out how to use those by yourself. The main idea is that this kit can measure up to 10mg/L nitrite and the tutorial is based around that.
- Two 1L bottles of water (buy new ones, so you don't have to go to the trouble of measuring it)
- One large syringe (10ml and up)
- A scale accurate to 0.01g (same as you would use for measuring your SN for its intended purpose).
Testing procedure:
- Take a marker and mark the water level on the unopened 1 liter bottles, this will be important later.
- Take one of the test strips and use it in one of the bottles of water, plain water, this should give you a baseline reading, the nitrite/nitrate tests should not react at all.
- Next weigh 1g of SN on your scale and dissolve it in one of the 1L bottles of water, shake well. You will now have a 1g/L (1000mg/L) solution of SN.
- Then open up your 2nd 1L bottle of water and spill out some of it.
- Use the syringe to pull 10ml of solution from the bottle you dissolved SN in. Since you are pulling 10mL out of a 1000mg/L solution, the syringe should now contain 10mg of SN. Squirt this solution into the other bottle, fill back up with regular water until the 1 liter mark you made earlier. Shake well again. This should give a 10mg/L concentration of SN which is low enough to be registered by the test kit.
- Put a new testing strip into this 2nd bottle and you will get a reading for nitrite and nitrate (ignore the nitrate reading, i think the strips themselves don't differentiate that much).
What you are looking for is a reading for nitrite that is very very close to the top of the chart which is 10mg/L for the kit I have mentioned. If you get significantly less (say halfway up or less) then your substance is not pure SN and I advice you not to use it.
Of course other kits than the one I mentioned can be used, you'll just have to dillute accordingly if your kit maxes out at lower levels. For instance, if your kit only goes to 5mg/L maximum you would only pick up 5mL solution from the first bottle, and so on.
Please remember to dispose of the contents of the bottles after testing your SN! The bottles themselves can be re-used after they are washed well.
