Quote Originally Posted by rfeiller
No it was nitrates not nitrites and to start this discussion was a good thing. With the commercial breeding of fish you have several objectives, three of which are growth rate, health of the animal and size it attains. In comparrisons that i did myself using hundreds of fish the results were always the same slowed growth rate, more prone to breaking down, and stunted growth. Always in proportion to level of nitrates.
Disease, genetics, temperature, feed, light, tank mates, starting size, and SO MANY OTHER FACTORS could play a role. Without a well designed experiment to study the variables in question any evidence observed is little more than anecdotal, unfortunately.

Hundreds if not thousands have come before you, in a scientific manner, and they have attempted to prove the claims you just made/implied. They have all failed. I don't think what you observed had a correlation with nitrates and there was definitely no causality involved. I suggest to you other factors were at play that either were not accounted for and/or could not be perceived.