Frustrated with test kits which do I believe

[KrisReef]

@Rscott
Re:
Speak noooob please :)

Your tank is fine, your test kits are not.

FYI: this is an international forum and some here are esl
Sincerely
Kris

 

[Lasse]

@Rscott
Re:
Speak noooob please :)

Your tank is fine, your test kits are not.

FYI: this is an international forum and some here are esl
Sincerely
Kris

I´m not a native english speaker - I write in Swenglish :) But some native english writers is difficult to understand for me and Google gives no help either.

What´s the underlying meaning with

Speak noooob please

and

and some here are esl

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Reefnman2]

I´m not a native english speaker - I write in Swenglish :) But some native english writers is difficult to understand for me and Google gives no help either.

What´s the underlying meaning with

and



Sincerely Lasse

English Second Language =esl

 

[KrisReef]

I´m not a native english speaker - I write in Swenglish :) But some native english writers is difficult to understand for me and Google gives no help either.

What´s the underlying meaning with

and



Sincerely Lasse

I was in a hurry earlier but needed to add that this thread has attracted some of the best help available from around the web.

I didn’t want to point folks out directly because I didn’t want to exclude any of them but I did toss in some hints for the careful readers just because.

 

[Sharkbait HooHaHa]

Been trying to find one actually
All my LFS just say they won’t sell them because they are crap
I would still like to try one tho

Amazon has them fairly cheap.

 

[brandon429]

hey can I intervene

don't purchase any more test kits, we called the ammonia condition p1 :)

to not factor the biological cues here leaves your tank open to losses in the future by being unsure of what bacteria do, without testing. the test kit you are about to buy wont agree with the others, so they're all equally unhelpful.

if you want to measure ammonia, which you do not have to, buy seneye or you're wasting more cash.



if the new test disagrees with the prior ammonia call, the test is off

we can call a cycle without a test kit, knowing submersion times and where bacteria already existed or were added. additionally, we have biological markers here that signify a zero ammonia tank


* if at any time you lack the required surface area to handle your bioload and feed, then your tank goes cloudy, smells, and crashes in 12 hours. There is no mechanism in reefing where the fish and feed are handled daily, as is here, leaving only a trace amount of ammonia free and still burning the system mildly. Test kits have harmed our accurate take on what bacteria do, again.

 

[deadhead_45yrs]

There are some bad Salifert Ammonia Test Kits out there....

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/bad-salifert-ammonia-test-kit.572278/

 

[IslandLifeReef]

@Rscott, you really need to slow down a bit. The best thing you can do is to follow the directions on the method that you chose. If that method says to run a skimmer, do that. If it says add a CUC first, do that. Chasing numbers and making drastic corrections leads to more problems than it solves.

If nitrite went up, and then down in your tank along with falling ammonia levels, you have bacteria to handle a small bio-load. I believe that the RS method has you add fish slowly. I believe this is to insure you don't overload the ability of your bio-filter to handle the load being placed on it. You may have exceeded that load by adding fish and allowing leftover food to rot in the tank.

Your system will be fine, you just need to BE PATIENT! :)

As @saltyfilmfolks says, nothing good happens fast in a reef tank. :)

Edit: Just looked at the RS reef mature program and it said to add herbivorous fish. I don't think your damsels fall into that category. These fish were probably suggested to eat any algae that might be growing in the tank. Seeing this, I do believe that the food you are feeding could have contributed to any ammonia increase.

 

[jfoster38122]

I honestly would not use sight or smell to test for anything
I don't think I've ever heard anyone knock salifert test kits
I've never used fluval test kits and don't know how accurate they are
and I agree slow down and remember stability is what you want
don't overfeed or add too much bioload too fast
my fish get fed once daily and only what they can eat in like 2 minutes and I've never had a fish starve lol
I'm also feeding a homemade fish food
I don't feed any flake food ever

 

[Dan_P]

So I am frustrated with the test kits I have been using a Salifert for my cycling

Results seemed as expected

Today I decided to take some water to the local fish store for testing to compare results and because I was considering purchasing my first round of hermit crabs

My salifert kits have been showing basically zero ammonia and zero nitrite

Today the fish store a test my water with a flu Val kit and comes up with something very different that is cause for me to do an emergency water change

The fluval kit shows dang near 1.2 ammonia

I bought my own second kit of the fluval brand to confirm the lfs didn’t mess up the test
I get 1.2

Test with Salifert side by side and get almos zero

what the heck.....
What do I do?

The color that appears in the picture seems to be too blue for the salicylate ammonia test. I have only seen this blue/sky blue color once or twice and could to replicate it. Also, the test color does not match any of the color patches. I would not trust this test kit until you validated it by testing new saltwater and new saltwater spiked with ammonia or ammonia chloride, say to 1 ppm.

 

[Streetcred]

I never use test kits

Mate, I'd be getting those little Asterina sp. quick smart. If you have acropora it'll be like an Asterina smorgasboard !

 

[Streetcred]

So I am frustrated with the test kits I have been using a Salifert for my cycling

Results seemed as expected

Today I decided to take some water to the local fish store for testing to compare results and because I was considering purchasing my first round of hermit crabs

My salifert kits have been showing basically zero ammonia and zero nitrite

Today the fish store a test my water with a flu Val kit and comes up with something very different that is cause for me to do an emergency water change

The fluval kit shows dang near 1.2 ammonia

I bought my own second kit of the fluval brand to confirm the lfs didn’t mess up the test
I get 1.2

Test with Salifert side by side and get almos zero

what the heck.....
What do I do?

Rscott, you fret way too much, calm down and relax ... Oosa! Oosa! There you go. ;-)

Important to ensure that your tank has cycled before you add any livestock ... I assume that you have been through this phase already.

Salifert has been around since I came into the hobby in the mid-90's and have been the stalwart of water testing. Fluval not so much! Provided that the Salifert ammonia test kit is not expired, I would prefer its results over many others, including Fluval, other than a testing instrument.

 

[Rscott]

WEll very interesting update.
Just want to thank everyone for chiming in.

I retested last night with the Fluval kit that was showing high NH3

Last night it tested clear! Now.... what the heck does this mean?
Was the test wrong to begin with?

Or... did i just maybe catch an ammonia spike?

Also, i saw an interesting video on youtube about "test kits lieing"
How to use an unionized ammonia calculator and what the test really means based on pH



So this was fairly interesting also. I plan to just let the tank do its thing as long as the fish are looking healthy.
Will let it sit for a few weeks as it matures and slowing increase the bioload. I also added some more rock to the sump to give some more surface area for bacteria. I wanted a minimalist aquascape so i only have 90 pounds of rock in 120 gallon tank.
Now with the sump its like 100 pounds.


Im happy to report that the fish are swimming nicely and even starting to explore the tank a bit instead of just their cave.
All looks well.
I also started to cycle my QT tank the other day. I did this one with Bio spira so we will see how it compares to red sea kit.
Again thanks to everyone that had thoughts and comments on this.

 

[IslandLifeReef]

WEll very interesting update.
Just want to thank everyone for chiming in.

I retested last night with the Fluval kit that was showing high NH3

Last night it tested clear! Now.... what the heck does this mean?
Was the test wrong to begin with?

Or... did i just maybe catch an ammonia spike?

Also, i saw an interesting video on youtube about "test kits lieing"
How to use an unionized ammonia calculator and what the test really means based on pH


So this was fairly interesting also. I plan to just let the tank do its thing as long as the fish are looking healthy.
Will let it sit for a few weeks as it matures and slowing increase the bioload. I also added some more rock to the sump to give some more surface area for bacteria. I wanted a minimalist aquascape so i only have 90 pounds of rock in 120 gallon tank.
Now with the sump its like 100 pounds.


Im happy to report that the fish are swimming nicely and even starting to explore the tank a bit instead of just their cave.
All looks well.
I also started to cycle my QT tank the other day. I did this one with Bio spira so we will see how it compares to red sea kit.
Again thanks to everyone that had thoughts and comments on this.

Glad to hear that your emergency is over. :)

Slowly increasing the bio load is a good plan. Make sure that you introduce less aggressive fish first and save the most aggressive ones for the end.

You also mentioned that your LFS quarantines their fish before they sell them. A lot of LFS make this claim, but very few actually follow a true QT protocol. If the fish are not kept separate and observed for at least a month, or medicated for the same period, then they haven't truly been QT'd. If fish are constantly being added to the same QT tank, the time starts over as soon as a new fish is added. It can take up to a month for many diseases to show themselves, and even longer for the treatment to end the life cycle of the parasite causing the disease. If you are really interested in only having QT'd fish in your tank, then I would ask your LFS to see their QT set-up and follow how long it takes for a fish to arrive at the store and then make it to the tanks for sale. It is cost prohibitive for most LFS to truly QT their fish. If they do, you are probably paying a premium for those fish.

If you only want QT'd fish in your display tank, then you should probably plan on doing it yourself.

Full disclosure, I don't QT fish. I watch fish at my LFS for several weeks, and if that fish is still available and I want it, only then do I put it in my tank. I have only lost two fish, one jumped when the cover was left off too long :(, and the other was just to shy for the other fish in my tank and I believe it starved. :(

 

[brandon429]

RScott

Earlier I made a thread discussing how titration testing/these kits we're using above (many thousands of people) have caused us to undo nearly all we understand of how bacteria behave/exist in an aquarium. For years, people didn't even challenge the first stated ammonia amount, it still goes on. They'll take anything stated as the real number

we have been made to think in the hobby, via all these differing test reads, that cycles vary.

Yet google cycling charts, across pages or books they came from, all show the same time frame...that means something.

Wouldn't you agree based on the degree of work in this post that test kits make it where we cannot understand what bacteria do, from testing alone?

This nullifies every cycling article ever written for reefing, because they're 100% titration based, don't start till you get the titration zero indication, which is rare to attain. Anyone can post how easy it works for them, but if we simply manage a cycling thread, what's really going on comes to light. No two reefers will report the same ammonia levels off a given sample and any cycling thread that uses titration testing ranges between 10-90 days to call a cycle complete, and not one google chart nor book entry ever written allows for that range.

Cycle variance is purely, to the harm of science, a notion invented by and circulated by web posters wielding kits that may or may not be anywhere near accurate.