- Joined
- Dec 28, 2016
- Messages
- 22,709
- Reaction score
- 21,894
Yes - my experience as well - ive bought all the others - they are hard to read - the hanna (to me) are unreliable - and the api gives a good trend. Frankly - I dont care if my alkalinity differs by o.5 in a day - until - god willing I get my mindstreamYea i have, in fact in my local store we tested 2 of salferts alkalinity tests and both were way off.. One kit showed my tank was at 18 dkh lol.. The other kit on the shelf we tried showed 16.. And for their frag tanks it showed 17 dkh.. which is impossible.
On doing further research i found alot of people had this problem with saliferty. Showing off the charts alk. So we pulled out a hannah checker and it showed my tank was at 9.5 dkh. Then we checked the api kit and it showed 9. (With api there is no .5. You have to take a guess with that.. meaning if almost turns yellow at 9.. then turns yellow at 10 its most likely 9.5
Thats thr only problem with api.
So tbh my 5$ api alk was showing what a 50$ tester that comes with what like 10 tests when you buy it showed. It was the same for the other tests too..
If you go online you can find other people who tested api with other kits and got near identical readings. Note i said near every kit will read different.
So to me.. with 55+ corals and 20+ being sps.. my api kits are doing just fine. Its more about stability then how on spot the kit is.. if it shows 9kh and its 9.5.. big deal. Just maintain it at the 9 ?? But thats just my way of thinking.
Only problem with api is they have no magnesium.. or other semi important tests like strontium or what not