| Test Kits |
What should you test? The answer to this question really depends on the type of reef you are keeping. I personally no longer test the water of my 20 gallon low to moderate demand desk tank. It receives no supplements, so there is nothing to cause it to get out of whack. I do occasionally check salinity levels since they can slowly change over time. On the other hand, I monitor conditions in my high demand tank every week and adjust as required to maintain optimum conditions.
During initial tank setup, you should test for the products of ammonia, nitrite and nitrate as verification that the nitrogen cycle has been completed. After this initial phase is complete, there is usually no reason to check for ammonia or nitrites again unless something gets totally out of whack. Nitrate levels should normally be at or about zero, but some reef keepers have a problem with these levels increasing, so you may want to check nitrates on occasion to make sure they are not elevating. If they do, you will need to take action to keep these levels under control.
Alkalinity and Calcium levels are very important to check, especially in moderate and high demand tanks. The other parameter that is frequently monitored is pH. This will tend to fluctuate between night and day. Monitoring it may help to catch an out of balance condition, but I don’t personally spend a great amount of time monitoring this parameter since it tends to stay in the OK range.
There are test kits to monitor other water parameters such as phosphates, silicates, copper and the like. There is usually no reason to continually test for these compounds. Diatom growth is a perfect indicator of silicates for instance, so use their growth or lack of it as a way to easily check this parameter. Excessive green algae growth can be an indication of excessive phosphates.
Test Kits
Which ones to use is an important decision.
There are many brands on the market and they are definitely not all of
equal quality. There are some that
tend to be inaccurate enough as to cause panic, consternation and frustration
over out of whack chemistry levels that are in fact only faulty test kits and
not faulty water conditions. Unfortunately,
some of the poorest performing kits are the most commonly sold.
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I use and recommend Salifert test kits. These kits are medium priced, high quality kits that give good repeatable results. |
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Another quality line is the LaMotte Test kits. These tend to be more expensive and a little more complex in operation, but are quality kits. The one pictured here is an Alkalinity kit that is actually designed for pool use, so you have to divide the result by 50 to get normal meq/l numbers. |
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The one brand that I recommend staying away from is the Red Sea Test Kit line. I have bought several and had them read wildly different numbers. They can cause the hobbyist to incorrectly treat their tanks and possibly cause harm. I have heard the same issue expressed by many other hobbyists. |
I personally use Seachem test kits for silcates, phosphates and iodine, but I cannot attest to their accuracy as they always read zero.
If your LFS does not carry a quality brand, you may need to order these through mail order.
