A Tale of Two Test Kits

“You can be cheap, or good, but not both”

I’ve been using Aquarium Pharamceutical Inc test kits for testing my tank’s parameters and I started with the basics – Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, pH, but then added their “Reef master kit” with gives you tests for Phosphates, Calcium, KH and Nitrates.

My nitrate results were always 15-30ppm with the basic API kit. I decided I’d test out the nitrate test from the “reef master kit” to see what results I got.

The result? The same test from the same company yielded different results. The basic kit had the nitrates at 35ppm (orange vial). The reef kit – 0ppm (yellow vial). That’s a big difference. So which one do I trust?

I headed to my local fish store to see what their test kits had to say. They use the Tetra test kits, so it was not a true apple to apple comparison, but I at least wanted to see which of my kits were off.

Their nitrate test kit said my nitrates were at about 20ppm. So I know my reef kit yield low results.

I decided to continue my experiment and have them test KH, calcium, and phosphates. Below are the comparisons.

My test kit:

• Phosphate =.5ppm
• KH = 12
• calcium =480

Aquatek results:

• Phosphate =.5ppm
• KH = 10
• calcium =420

Conclusion:
You clearly get what you pay for. I did some digging around online and API kits have a reputation for having high variances among test kits. The variances could be due to the age of the test kit, or if the kit got hot in shipping, etc. In other words, I don’t recommend the API test kits. They are cheap, and can be found just about anywhere, but that doesn’t mean you should be using them.

Or I can always just do the eyeball test – everything looks good…yes. Ok, all is good then! (Not recommended, but it will work…for a while)

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