Salifert testing, I know they are not a sponsor but?

[najer]

Everyone loves salifert, ok except me!
I will expand on this soon, I am going to make one last call tomorrow, I have the skeletons to show the loss of corals, it turned out that my test kit for phos was correct and the one at my lfs was faulty.
Don't even go there about how much food I added to stop the "supposed" plummet in phos because I added a soft phos media, Eheim Phosout, I was startled, I tested nearly 1 (one) and the shop tested .05, their kit was faulty so I banged my phos to 3 three so off the scale and nitrates to 100, off the scale due to over feeding.
I was at my lfs as conversations were had over the phone, pics taken and batch numbers were confirmed, I am not taking this lightly, no one even said sorry!!

 

[Snoopy 67]

Can't really fault Salifert, you have to fault the LFS. I would have had them use a new kit & if mine was off I would buy it, if it was theirs they use it. MHO anyway.

 

[HuduVudu]

Test kits can definitely be failure points and if you are getting numbers that you think are crazy try to validate before you do anything. Also if you do do something don't yank the tank around. These biomes really really really don't like to be yanked around, in fact IMHO tank stability is paramount to success. My calcium levels are currently at 250ppm due to some things that I am doing with my tank (my tank is SPS dominant). I am not really worried, I have had this kind of thing happen before in fact I have actually grown coral at this level. That said, guaranteed if I jack the calcium level up to what would be considered low acceptable I would kill all of my stonies. They really really really don't like big jumps. Things go bad slowly. Making them right immediately is a recipe for disaster.

 

[najer]

Can't really fault Salifert, you have to fault the LFS. I would have had them use a new kit & if mine was off I would buy it, if it was theirs they use it. MHO anyway.

3 kits were tried once we figured something was wrong.

 

[Mastiffsrule]

Hi,

I am sorry about the coral loss. That is horrible. I am not clear where the blame is placed.

It may be coincides but I just got in a new salifert Po4 Wednesday since my old was about to run out. I was feeding reef roids off the chart in a little experiment. The last test I did with the old kit was .5 which seemed right. When I got the new kit I was going to do a side by side to see if new and old met up. First thing I realized was my old kit expired in 2017. (That’s not a good sign for my testing regiment). The other issue was I only got 1 more drop from the old bottle so I could not do side by side. But when I did the new test, it matched up right with the old test from days earlier at .5

Just my experience. Hopefully you can get some resolution, even though it will not help your losses it will help avoid an issue going forward.

 

[Potatohead]

You are upset because your test kit was correct?

 

[najer]

You are upset because your test kit was correct?

sorry you are missing the point of the the post, yes.

 

[najer]

Mods, please lock or delete this, I'm just a freebe member so ...

 

[Ike]

I dislike salifert and have had some awful disparities with their test kits. I used them and recommended them for many years, but no longer do. The main reason for this is the customer service was pretty terrible when I had a problem with two alkalinity test kits reading very differently. After too much hassle Salifert sent me a replacement kit, so I then had three different test kits, all with expiration dates well in the future and I got three different results consistently. IIRC the one that read lowest and highest was 3 dKH apart. When tested tested with reference solutions and and compared not one of the three was accurate. At that point I was done...

Even prior to that I had given up on the Salifert PO4 test kit because I had two inconsistent test kits and found the Hanna checker to be far better and more believable.

That said, I'm not sure how legitimate your beef with salifert is and PO4 kits, but count me among the people that will never buy another of their tests kits again unless something dramatic changes with them.

 

[Duncan Tse]

Salifert PO4 test will get you the general idea but there is no way to accurately pinpoint a number just by looking at the colors and the range inbetween numbers is too large.

I would recommend getting the hanna ulr po4 checker.

What makes you think your test kit is correct but your lfs one is bad?

Also take things slowly in this hobby even if that change is for the better as maybe your coral didn't make it because you fed way too much and PO4 spiked.

I'm not familiar with the soft phos and eheim phosout products but are they just gfo to reduce PO4? Seems to me that its counter productive as the increased feedings and gfo will cause large fluctuations in PO4

 

[Nick Steele]

I have nothing but love for my salifert test kits. Phos is a little hard to read because large jumps but everything else has been spot on. Alk rest is right there with Hanna, phos is as close as can be with Hanna. Nitrate is same as api. I’m assuming my calc and ph test are spot on as well.

 

[dbl]

@najer, really sorry to hear about the coral loss...that just stinks. I hope you can find some resolution. Not that this will help, but as mentioned above, I've found the Hanna ULR to be the answer to my frustrations with the various test kits.

 

[Ron Reefman]

I wish I could help, but I'm at a loss. It terrible that you lost corals, but if your test kit was good, who are you blaming?

I never even test for phosphate because I don't think any test is very good and levels go up and down too much and too quickly. I use API to test for Ca and alk. If I get a screwy reading I have Salifert tests as backups. I also have API and Salifert test kits for many other parameters but almost never use them. They are used when I think I see an issue.

Good luck.

 

[rkpetersen]

The Salifert magnesium and potassium test kits are excellent, imo.
The other Salifert tests can be problematic for various reasons.
FWIW, I use Hanna for calcium, alk, and phosphorus, Red Sea for nitrate.