Disappointed with Chekcers

[Myka]

Originally Posted by tdorey

the pouches should be either a spoon or pills/liquid cause its hard to get all of it in the vial for an accurate test.

The cases are bit lame, they don't seem to stay closed.

I'll see how the reviews are with the Calcium kit.

Thanks for the feedback.

I have the same experience, I think the pouches are terrible. I'm never 100% sure I got 100% of the powder into the tiny opening of the vials. I would also prefer a scoop to measure powder. I understand the idea though, as I know many people aren't accurate in measuring, but I think those are the same people that wouldn't get all the powder out of the pouches. My cases don't stay closed either - totally annoying. I find the reagent bottles often leak, so now I make sure to store the kits on end so the reagent bottles are upright.

I have an old 713 PO4 kit that I'm not sure if it really is accurate. It tells me my tank has 0.00 ppm which I can't believe even though I got a reading of 0.07 or something on a different tank. I think these numbers are way too low. Maybe just because it's an old, original kit.

The alkalinity kit I love - no powder pouches to empty. I did find one of the syringes didn't seal well with the tip and I would have trouble with the fluid leaking out as soon as I lifted the tip out of the reagent bottle. Luckily when you buy more reagent you get a new syringe and tip too, and I haven't had this problem since.

I also have a calcium kit that I hate. It gives me readings I can't believe - like 450 ppm on a tank with no dosing using H2Ocean salt. That's not even possible. The calcium kit also uses only 0.1 mL of sample water so even with careful measuring it would be easy to measure 0.11 mL or 0.09 mL which would cause a 10% reading inaccuracy or about 40 ppm when measuring calcium. I sold this kit - I have used Elos for calcium for years and much prefer this kit over the Hanna or Salifert.

I might try a new PO4 checker sometime...