Water testing question and thoughts

[CfishGo]

I'm still in the process of setting up a 70g and 10g (for quarantine purposes). Both are filled and I've started the planting in the 70g. I'm in no hurry for livestock and have opted to begin the cycle with bagged organics. Slow yes, but like I stated I'm in no hurry.

Testing my tap water showed high PH, KH and GH. I will not go down the rabbit hole of chasing water parameters. Just not worth it. I want to enjoy the hobby, not be frustrated with it. I do have about 18 yrs. experience of fishkeeping. FYI: That's the background of what's going on.

I decided to take water samples around to various stores within 50 miles of my home just to compare their testing results. I bagged up 4 bags, placed the in a cooler and off I went. Fortunately all but 1 tested my samples for free. All came up with different results. I ask what they were using to test the samples. 2 used API master, 2 used strips. 1 used both when I showed them my results using the API master kit. So here's the question. How do we actually know for fact what test results or kits are really reliable? Everyone's water is different depending on the water source and where one lives. The internet seems to lean heavy on the API master kit but is that only based on opinion, gut feeling or what?

I'm sending a sample to an independent lab next week. They have no stake in the testing results and I'm curious what the results will be. Please feel free to share your thoughts on this. I'm truly interested in your opinion about testing methods and/or kits.

 

[Aiken Drum]

Testing kits aren't all that reliable. Its a home test kit. Different kits used in different stores will have different expiry dates. Even 2 people using the same kit can come up with different results. Maybe the amount of water is 4.8ml in one test tube and 5.2ml in another. Maybe one person squeezes the bottle a little harder than another and the drops come out a little larger. These things can effect the result.

While you have to base decisions on something, you can't really trust the numbers to be accurate. No ammonia, low ammonia, high ammonia for example should be the most you take from these things.

Liquid test kits are more accurate than strips, some brands are easier to use and read than others. My water company puts their water parameters online down to a postcode level, so I can check a test against that. For instance they say nitrate in my area is 7ppm. The API liquid test for nitrate comes out in the 5 to 10ppm region. If I use an API test strip it says zero nitrate. And even if it did say there was some nitrate, the difference between readings on those strips are impossible to tell apart. I could tell 0 from 40ppm, but the pink colours are so close to each other you can't differentiate adjacent readings from each other.

And some of the tests aren't even for what they say they are on the bottle. Most ammonia tests are for total ammonia nitrogen, which is free ammonia + ammonium. A few are for free ammonia only so you have to really understand what the test is actually reading. The API KH test is actually a test for alkalinity (similar, but not the same). The nitrate test will show positive for nitrate in the presence of nitrite, so is only useful in a cycled aquarium with no nitrite in the water.

 

[CfishGo]

Thank you Aiken for sharing your thoughts on this. I hope others will share as well.

 

[Andy Sager]

My 2 cents runs along Aiken's line.
API's master kit became the " go to" kit because for the longest time, it was the only affordable kit in the hobby that tested for the basics of fish keeping. It was cheaper to buy the one kit than the 4 tests individually. Today, there are other options and now Fritz Aquatics also has a master kit to rival API's kit.
That all said, home tests are not going to give you specific numbers. They just aren't designed for that. They give you ranges. The only kit that really gets you closer to specific is the pH kit.
Today's hobbyist has become ( or started out) lazy (IMO) and see what they can get away with without doing the work. I always fall back to what I was taught by my mentor, a certified ichthyologist, who said the following regarding ammonia: " If it ain't zero, it ain't right. Fix it." Regarding nitrite: " If it ain't zero, it ain't right. Fix it." Regarding nitrate: " If it ain't zero, it ain't right. Fix it. " Today, there are a number of different ways of keeping tanks so not all of the old methods will apply. For example, in a planted tank, you don't want zero nitrates when you have plants that require nitrates. Today we have a better understanding of what the nitrogen cycle is and when it starts and finishes but even with that, unless you have water that is under 5.0 pH where nitrification stops, if you have nitrites, no matter what the number, it's a bad thing, fix it!!! Unless you have water with a pH under 6.8, if you have ammonia or nitrite, FIX IT!!! So how do you fix these things? The answer is the dreaded Water Change. People will spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to avoid doing a simple water change. To me that's like saying I want a gas car but I don't want to buy gas. It makes no sense to me. The hobby doesn't have to be expensive to be in but that requires the hobbyist to gain some knowledge. Before the internet, we had books. I had tons of them even tho I had a master teaching me. As he said to me " I'm not always going to be here so you better have another source of information. " Now to confuse people, we have fish farms and the internet. The internet tells you about fish where they come from. Farmed fish do not come from where the internet teaches us. Does it make a difference? You bet your a*s it does. Farmed fish have different diseases, different pathogens and in some cases, different genetics than wild fish so your information source does not always match the fish you are getting. The hobbyist needs to ask more questions, get more information, do more research before ever getting into the hobby or buying their stock. ( Whew, that was a tangent....sorry. )
Regarding different stores and different water results, I travel the country and have purchased fish in multiple stores in multiple states and it always proves out that " Water is not the same everywhere. " When I was on a buying tour, I brought my test kit with me and got different results from different states. I was comparing " apples to apples". When you compare results from different test kits and test strips, you are comparing "apples to oranges." When you get different results from the same test kit, you have a good start to know how you need to acclimate your new fish to YOUR water. You don't need the exact numbers. You just need to know how different the waters are and the further apart they are, the slower you need to acclimate the fish.
In your case, it will be interesting to know the results from the lab in comparison to what you are getting from your test kit. IN the end tho, it wont matter what the numbers are ( within reason) if you compare apples to apples.

 

[CfishGo]

Yes, it always cracks me up when I read "experts" telling hobbyists to mimic a farm raised fishes natural habitat. As in what I ask..a concrete bathtub full of nothing? An exaggeration but I'm sure you get my point. We as hobbyist for the most part are only exposed to fish who have been bred for generations in captivity. These fish have long ago had any instinct for their natural environment bred out of them.

 

[Andy Sager]

Yes, it always cracks me up when I read "experts" telling hobbyists to mimic a farm raised fishes natural habitat. As in what I ask..a concrete bathtub full of nothing? An exaggeration but I'm sure you get my point. We as hobbyist for the most part are only exposed to fish who have been bred for generations in captivity. These fish have long ago had any instinct for their natural environment bred out of them.

Absolutely. When I got started, most of my fish were either wild caught or just a few generations from wild. I spent a lot of time learning a fish's natural habitat and habits to get them to spawn. Very different from today's fish.