I read a ton and even had a few email conversations with the authors. One of them was Dr. Tanner of Swiss Tropicals. He is why I have Mattenfilters and Poret foam cubes instead of the typical tanks sponge filters.
I am familiar with a lot of the basics of all this stuff but I am far from being a trained scientist. However, I am also observant. Somewhere on this site I have posted a picture of one of my tanks with a Mattenfilter. Somebody, commented on how clear the water was. This was when I first realized this fact. I am wired to notice just the reverse. I don''t need to know when a tank is going well, I need not to miss when something is going wrong

I must confess my initial motivation to migrate towards Mattens and Poret cubes was the result of the fact that they required cleaning much less frequently than other forms of filtration and media I was using. I am now in my early 70s and wanted to be doing less work each year without suffering any loss in water quality. I got the less work but had to settle for even cleaner water.
One last thing re nitrate tests. What I meant was not that the reading would fluctuate but that they would be inaccurate. By that I mean that given the process involved, the small sample size, how easy it is to be slightly different on drop sizes and in then in shaking the reagents, errors would be greatest in the range of 0 and 20 ppm. How much does it matter to most if they have an 80 ppm reading which is really 5 ppm higher or lower? It matters a lot more at lower concentrations. Where I think the kit is most useful is to see changes up or down. The only time I even test for nitrate is when doing a dry season where I am doing fewer water changes, I want rising TDS but not from rising nitrate.