test kits

[overflow]

I am looking to get a good test kit, but i am on a budget. I have been looking at red sea and seachem products. these are what i am thinking i will need:

ph, trites and trates, ammonia, alk, hardness

these areb other kits i looked at:

phosphate, silica, iodine and calcium.


which are most necesary and which are most recomended.

i am buying my live rock at the end of this week, do i need anything other than temp and sg before i add the rock?

thanks

 

[jasontatro]

Definitely start off with the first kits you mentioned, pH, trites, trates, and ammonia. You will need these to get you through your cycle. Alk and hardness are the same thing, but you will want one of those as well. On the cheap end I have had good luck with Tetra test kits, with the exception of their nitrate kit. Seachem are also decent. If you can affors them, I think most people would suggest you buy Salifert.

 

[G~]

if you are on a budge then i would skip the ammonia and nitrite test kits. you will only need these during the cycling of the tank. you can have the LFS do these test for you. i have not needed one of these test kits in the past 5 yrs. give your tank a good long time to cycle. visit the LFS once a week to get your water tested and pick up a good test kit for alk, Ca. other necessaties are a refractometer instead of a swing arm hydrometer. and a pH monitor instead of a test kit, this is more of a necessaty if you are running an complex system with kalk and Ca reactors. a dumb dip kit is enough to make sure you are in the ballpark.

i use seachem kits. i like them a lot.

G~

 

[DonW]

I have to agree a PH probe is a must have, probably the best purchase I've made. I do think that eventually you should own one of each, but I dont test ammonia, nitrites or nitrates. Every few months I get the itch to test but allways comes up 0. I do test ca and alk weekly.
The Tetra alk/dkh test kit is close but never accurate +-3. I got one when my LFS was out of the Sea test then eventually compared the results to a salifert.

I would buy Pinpoint phprobe $99, Salifert ca $20 and alk $20 and a sea test combo kit (ph, amm, nitrates and nitrites) $45.

Once your up and running adding corals then Salifert phos and mag.

I'm no expert but this combination works well for me at an affordable price.

Don