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- May 17, 2020
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I voted 1, 2, and 3.
If corals are growing and looking good you probably have good things going on in your water, but not always. And there are certainly tanks out there who have parameters far outside the common guidelines that are doing great! And then some of my most "normal" parameters have been when my tank was infested with GHA.
I like to test regularly because I've been hit before by "everything looks good" only to find out too late that my nutrients had bottomed out and BAM in came the dinos. If I'd been more diligent before that and not just gone with "looks good" I might have been able to head that off.
I mostly like ICP tests for their ability to help calibrate my own tests (I usually do a full set of home tests the day I send out a sample). It's good to know your home tests are accurate before jumping in prematurely with any corrective measures. Recently I had PO4 home tests showing numbers that were climbing so high that it got to the point where I didn't think they could be right anymore. Spoiler alert - they were right. Good job, Hanna!
There is a lot of visible and invisible involved in water quality.
If corals are growing and looking good you probably have good things going on in your water, but not always. And there are certainly tanks out there who have parameters far outside the common guidelines that are doing great! And then some of my most "normal" parameters have been when my tank was infested with GHA.
I like to test regularly because I've been hit before by "everything looks good" only to find out too late that my nutrients had bottomed out and BAM in came the dinos. If I'd been more diligent before that and not just gone with "looks good" I might have been able to head that off.
I mostly like ICP tests for their ability to help calibrate my own tests (I usually do a full set of home tests the day I send out a sample). It's good to know your home tests are accurate before jumping in prematurely with any corrective measures. Recently I had PO4 home tests showing numbers that were climbing so high that it got to the point where I didn't think they could be right anymore. Spoiler alert - they were right. Good job, Hanna!
There is a lot of visible and invisible involved in water quality.