Test Kits

[Myka]

Hach kits i'm talking about are awesome because they have a continuous gradient color wheel, plus the way you read it uses a sample of your water too to compensate for any color in the water itself kind of like the D-D Merck phosphate kit does, but better. Hach kits are all over $100, but some of them test for more than one parameter like the Nitrite/Nitrate kit, and are good for about 100 tests.

Hach also offer test strip kits, drop count titrator kits, digital drop count titrators, and color cube matching kits. These are all cheaper than the color wheel kits, but I'm not sure if they are any more accurate than Salifert or Elos, however they are still quite a bit pricier than Salifert and Elos. Maybe someone else knows their accuracy in comparison?

The Hach colorimeters run about $400. You have to buy one for each parameter, but the $400 includes the test kits which are good for about 100 tests.

Hach kits are laboratory grade, and usually used for environmental testing. Some kits read slightly different forms of each parameter than what we're used to or different units of measure. They have an Iron kit that is likely much more accurate than the notoriously inaccurate ones that offered in the reef industry.

An interesting note is that Hach offers a cyanide color wheel test kit, although I'm not sure that you would be able to detect cyanide in the bag water of a fish that was collected using cyanide. I would be very interested to find out though!

At the end of the day, even the best hobby grade test kits like Salifert and Elos are horribly inaccurate when compared to laboratory grade testing. D-D Merck and LaMotte's are just the beginning of accuracy in the hobby grade test kits.

[BlueAbyss]

I agree with what Myka said above, all hobbyist test kit results should be taken with a grain of salt...

Maybe two, in the case of my freshwater API test kit. Every time I do the ammonia test, it comes back around the same color (about .25 by my eyes and a few other opinions). There is 0 nitrite. Whether this is because I actually have ammonia (I did find a dead fish this morning and was testing yesterday, but that doesn't explain the other 2 readings I've gotten over the past week that were the same color) or the test is inaccurate is hard to say. I like to think it's inaccurate, but I'll be running a few tests tommorrow to find out.

I'm afraid to think I might have a problem with the saltwater kit I bought at the same time... Meh, they were a featured product at J & L, so I got a deal on them anyhow if they turn out to be garbage.

[Canadian]

And save more money by not wasting it on a useless nitrite test kit.

From Randy Holmes-Farley at http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/index.php

Nitrite

Aquarists' concerns about nitrite are usually imported from the freshwater hobby. Nitrite is far less toxic in seawater than in freshwater. Fish are typically able to survive in seawater with more than 100 ppm nitrite!17 Until future experiments show substantial nitrite toxicity to reef aquarium inhabitants, nitrite is not an important parameter for reef aquarists to monitor. Tracking nitrite in a new reef aquarium can nevertheless be instructive by showing the biochemical processes that are taking place. In most cases, I do not recommend that aquarists bother to measure nitrite in established aquaria.