My disillusionment with Test Kits.

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jarrod0987

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Jul 12, 2005
Messages
512
I have always been a huge fan of knowing the truth. I always wanted to know all about the unseen bacterial and chemical world inside my aquarium. For 20 years now. I just find the unseen fascinating.

However, after yet another realization that a kit is misreporting due to interference from another ION interfering I have realized it's not a simple as buying a test and running it. You also have to know A LOT about what your testing and what might throw your test off.

The short version

API ammonia and nitrite test kit's are a great way to tell if your nitrogen cycle is done or not.
Also Great for finding out if you have none, a little, or a lot of Nitrate.
Phosphate is not nearly as useful as I thought it would be. I keep it much higher now then I used too.
KH is not a bad test. If your doing WC it's not needed but if you are not I would test this.
GH is not important in a fish only tank, not specific enough for a planted tank, and also the wrong range for Salt Water.
Copper is mostly for if your dosing copper meds which most of us don't do anymore.
Iron falls out of the water after a few hours so no point in testing it.
Calcium is important but other elements throw it off such as Magnesium, Potassium, and Sodium.
Magnesium test shows potassium also.
Potassium kit is pretty inaccurate and most are way out of range and made for SW.
Chlorine test strips are inaccurate and can have deadly levels and show nothing. Dechlorinators work very fast if you agitate the water so there is no need to even test for it unless your using an RODI and you want to use a Hanna Checker to see if your carbon block is finished. Forget the strips.

All this testing is also super time consuming and expensive.

In the end, I would say monitoring the cycle on a new tank is still a good thing to do. The strips are not great but probably easier and good enough. If you doing planted that I recommend Tom Barr's EI approach and/or Root tabs at this point. Forget about testing. For Salt Water it is a whole different conversation :D
 
100% agree. These days I basically know what my levels will be at what time etc. I haven't used a test kit for about 6 months. Can't say I've ran into any trouble either.
 
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