got ethical husbandry?

Test Kits

musclebenz

Supporting Member
What test kits to you use and recommend for testing water? I hear Hana is good for some and not for all?

Phosphate
Nitrate
Calcium
Alkalinity
 
I use Hanna for phosphate. Red Sea for alk and ca, although Salifert are good for those two as well. I have never found a nitrate test kit I like.
 
Hanna for Alkalinity and phosphate (ultra low).

Red Sea for nitrate because easier to compare the color to standards (Salifert one is bad for this).

Salifert for calcium and magnesium (no color comparison required) and a few others more rarely.

Of those, the only ones I feel strongly are much better than the competition are the Hanna ones.
 
I use Hannah for alk, po4 (ultra low), and Ca. Most people find the Hannah Ca test kit either complicated or inaccurate but that hasn’t been my experience. I think it’s equally complicated as the others and I think most of the inaccuracies are from user error (maybe because it’s complicated:) ).

Nitrates, I go with Red Sea.
 
I'll probably be hung for blasphemy, but I actually use API for alk. It's simple enough that I can test in less than 30 seconds, so I'm willing to use it more regularly. It's a trade off for it's lack of accuracy though (it only measures alk in whole numbers). All the other test kits I've tried you either need to do math or switch droppers halfway through which meant I didn't actually test as often as I should.

Hanna for Phosphate (phosphorous ULR) and Red Sea for everything else.
 
After bluprntguy is hung for blasphemy, they will string me up too. I use the API master test kit. AND it's many many years old. Currently, I only test for nitrates, and my nitrates are so bad that I don't go for precision, I go for "is it less dark red than it was before?" At the moment, I'm only testing to see if it is going down, not what the actual number is.

I actually don't bother testing the other stuff much.

A few years ago, I did send a water sample away to get tested. It's expensive, but in one fell swoop it helped me diagnose my water problems (My Nitrates were over 200 ppm, when ideally it should be 0-5).

V
 
I use api for calcium.

If you are going to use api for alk, if you double the test water sample volume then each drop is only 0.5dkh instead of 1dkh
 
Back
Top