WQ Parameters & Test Kits

[timmay42]

I'm interested in starting up a marine reef system at home, and I'm still very much in the planning stages. I've been plugging around the web looking at sites and forums to find a lot of my information, and it seems that, as far as test kits go, folks speak very highly of the ones made by Salifert. They are, however, somewhat expensive ($15-$25 each), so that cost certainly adds up. I have two questions:

1. I am wondering which parameters I need to test. At the moment, I was planning on the following:

Salinity (I plan to purchase a refractometer)
Ammonia
Calcium
KH/Alkalinity
Magnesium
NO2 & NO3
DO
Phosphate
pH
CO2 (?)

2. What is the most inexpensive way to obtain decent testing equipment? Do they really vary that much in terms of their quality, or will cheaper tests at least give me a good picture of what's going on?

Cheers,

Tim

 

[Anonymous]

I like the salifert test kits. They are worth what you are paying for them. I only test for amonia, nitrate, nitrite, calcium and alkalinity. Once I gt my tank established I only test once a week or longer, unless something is acting up, so the kits last a while

 

[Anonymous]

In case noone said this yet..
:welcome:

What Wazz said :lol:. I like the Saifert kits for the long haul, but for cycling a tank you will need tons of the ammonia/Ph/nitrite/nitrate test kits so IMO you can get away with like the RedSea kits for those values until the tank settles down. When a tank is cycling you just need to watch the trends, and 100% precision isn't really necessary.

Once a tank cycles, I only test for ph, Ca, Kh, twice a month-unless of course I see a problem then I test for everything. Or, if I add/change something-like add more rock or a new skimmer-then before I do it I take a set of baseline values, and then test until I'm sure things have settled down so the more expensive kits do last quite a while.