Low Nitrates In Planted Tank. Good Or Bad?

So I decided to skip last week's water change to see how my aquarium would handle it. I tested the water and I noticed that the nitrates are low. Is that good?

10 gallon planted with:
bacopa c.
Amazon swords
Anubias nana

3 male platies

0 ppm ammonia
0 ppm nitrite
~10 ppm nitrate

Oh and I had DIY CO2 running until from Thursday to Saturday. It's a low tech tank so I only use Flourish root tabs.

 

Low nitrates is good but water changes are not just to lower nitrates. They are also for replenishing minerals in the water and other things.

 

Both of our 7.2 gallon betta tanks never show nitrates: the tests always read 0/0/0

Each tank is covered with floating wisteria and salvinia.

 

But don't plant need the nitrates?

 

My planted tank always shows 10 Nitrate. Plants are thriving using any excess nitrate to feed on. There really should be no need to boost your nitrates and I never use fertilizers or cO2. I may use a 1/2 dose of root tabs every 4-6 months. If I remember.

 

Plants can use ammonia, nitrite and nitrate to obtain nitrogen. The prefered form is ammonia. This means they will suck ammonia if available first and will only use nitrite or nitrates when there is no ammonia, that may explain why some tanks with 0 nitrogen don't end up with dead plants. Anyways, 0 nitrate is not good in planted tanks. You want to keep it at 10-20 ppm.
Water changes can't be replaced I'm afraid. I was running a planted tank where I had to dose nitrogen because there was no nitrogen available, I wasn't doing water changes to test things out. I probably did not do a water change in 3 weeks, maybe even a month. When I got back in track and started doing 50% weekly water changes the fish were way more active and looked better.