What should I buy with my birthday money?

[New&no clue]

+1 on better test kits

what would you recommend?

 

[Berlibee]

Go with Salifert.

 

[New&no clue]

Now show us pix

here she is, still a baby

 

[Daniel92481]

Wow! Nice tank! There is this Hanna salinity/temperature checker that is really awesome, and not too expensive. I just got it the other day, and couldn’t be happier. It really makes refractometers a thing of the past. The time it takes to rinse your refractometer with RODI between readings, you could have tested the water 5x with this. Highly recommended!

 

[Mastiffsrule]

Super nice. Great job. Just needs that Ferrari now

 

[lapin]

Hanna checkers for P04 and Alk. With Alk being pretty important.

 

[Roy Arena]

Happy birthday! You have an awesome grandma. +1 on the Salifert test kits s they are always my choice. I think the previous post recommended a lower Alk. There is no need to run it that high. 7.5 to 8.5 is fine.

 

[New&no clue]

Go with Salifert.

the reason I like Hanna is because I have a really hard time with the colors. I don’t know if I have poor vision or what but I just can’t see the difference, which is why I like a digital read out.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Salifert or Nyos test kits

 

[vetteguy53081]

Birthday wishes !!!!

 

[Dkeller_nc]

This might not be in the birthday budget right now, but if you stay in the hobby and it becomes an obsession (guilty of that for the last 30 years, btw), you might want to consider a digital refractometer like this one. They're accurate, and simple to interpret.

By the way - I'd skip the iodine test kit and iodine dosing for now. You don't have enough soft coral in your tank just yet to really justify supplementing it. In fact, may maintain quite nice tanks that are filled with soft corals that never test or supplement with iodine.

 

[Zero1091]

Id agree with waiting on the iodine for now because the tank isnt highly stocked yet with corals.
Water changes should be enough to replace it.
From experience once my tank became fully stocked as mixed reef, sps specifically montipora started loosing color due to iodine deficiency water changes were no longer cutting it.
I then needed to start dosing iodine along with other elements and within 2 weeks montipora quickly recovered.

I use the Salifert iodine test kit. May not be 100% accurate but it tells me if there is a safe margin or if there isn't any at all. After dosing it gives me a good reading.

+1 on Salifert alk, hanna gives a ball park reading not really consistent. Usually doing a test right after another you wont get the same reading and with the cost of the reagents it would get expensive considering youd be running out if them sooner than a box of salifert Alk.

Id suggest
Cal, Alk, Mag Salifert
Hanna ULR phosphate (buy extra reagent powder)
That should get you through the stage of where you are with the tank and last you a good while.

 

[Justfebreezeit]

No offense but anyone doing the hanna alk and not getting consistent readings is doing it wrong.

 

[Dkeller_nc]

Possibly. But you should also realize that the chemistry setup for the Hanna test has some potential issues that make it considerably less robust than a titration test (like the Salifert, RedSea, etc...).