Who tests their water-change mix?

[lastlight]

I'm onto my second change tomorrow and haven't tested my water (any of it beside ammonia and nitrtite) and I got thinking about this. I plan to test the tank every week or so I *think* but not sure I want to bother with each 25 gallon batch. I roll my pails well before use.

[banditpowdercoat]

I only test Ca/Mg/Alk in tank and WC water. Then adjust WC water to acheave tank levels I want

[lastlight]

How often do you do WCs?

For me this would mean 2 tests of each. Every week.

[banditpowdercoat]

Definately not often as I should 3-4 weeks but have relatively low Bioload

[lastlight]

See if I did monthly changes no biggie I'd test both without hesitation. I just think testing is a royal pain and each time I do tests my mind is aware that the hobby kits are all crap anyways. I'm sure I will test the big 3 weekly but I need more votes for 'yes' to guilt me into it.

[Delphinus]

I test for Ca, Alk and Mg for every new BATCH of salt (new bucket or new bag). After that the first water is made, I don't bother with it again (ie. don't test for every water change).

I have been burned far too often by being caught unawares that a salt is not living up to its credo for params. The irony is the more expensive salts have always been the worst offenders too. Just because you pay more doesn't give you an assured QA process, apparently (and I love how it always gets turned around on you so that it's the "users" fault that a salt has no Mg or Alk because they didn't "mix the salt before mixing the water". I think that's totally absurd, but yeah, I guess you have to do it since you can't rely on the salt makers to adequately prepare their product before they send it to market). Although I would go so far to suggest that the times I noticed that Alk was woefully low, or dangerously high, or Mg was half the advertised claim, that pre-use mixing the salt didn't help - the problem was the salt itself.

So, I don't bother with premium salts anymore. If I have to dose Ca, Alk and/or Mg into a salt I figure I might as well save a few bucks because the price of chems is far less than the increased premium price on the salt itself. So I use IO, I accept that I'll have subpar Ca, Alk and Mg, so I dose accordingly for each new batch of salt. (The surprising thing is these numbers are usually not as bad as you'd think, to boot.) The nice thing is that once I know how much a batch needs for one makeup bucket, I know how much to add for the next water change.

But it does mean I *have* to test each new bag or bucket.

[kien]

I only test new buckets for Alk, Calc and Mag. (ie, the first WC from that bucket). Once I have an idea of what the parameters for that bucket is I'll dose the WC to compensate. However, I'm finding that I don't really need to do this. I've been using the basic Instant Ocean salt for as long as I've been salting and the parameters have been more or less the same since day one. I like consistency.

[lastlight]

Yeah that's a great idea. I think if you roll pails well you can assume the mixes from it will be consistent enough.

[mark]

Like others I'll do a couple of samples of each new pail of salt for alk/Ca/Mg and record and adjust my supplementing from there. For the makeup water between the sample batches it's just TDS for a check of the ro/di then match S.G. to the display.

[StirCrazy]

I test salinity, PH and temp for my water change water. the others are kinda mute point unless you are doing a masive waterchange like ovewr 50%. you can adjust Mg, Alk, and Ca once in the tank.

my reasoning for this is if you do a 10% water change like most do weekly, then if you tank is 400Ca, 11 Alk, and 1400mg

and you add 10% new water that is 300 Ca, 10 Alk and 1200mg

then you are going to end up with a tank level of
aprox 390Ca, 10.9 Alk and 1370-1380Mg

nothing that realy scares me and minor to corect in the tank.

but if your PH and salinity are out while they will only afect the tank a little they are ones that your live stock are more supseptible to changes in.

Steve