# Which drop checker would you trust?



## lilirose (8 Nov 2020)

I bought a Blau U-shaped drop checker because I was interested by the shape- it looks really sleek. However, I put 4 dkh solution in it and installed it right next to a more traditional drop checker for comparison's sake, and now (five hours later) they do not agree.

Is the Blau a bust, or is it not a fair test because I didn't put fresh solution in the traditional drop checker today?

(Please excuse the dirty inner glass, am waiting on a delivery of snails and want them to have something to eat when they arrive.)


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## RudeDogg1 (8 Nov 2020)

I would of put fresh in both


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## lilirose (8 Nov 2020)

RudeDogg1 said:


> I would of put fresh in both



Done. CO2 has just switched off for the day, will update after lights on tomorrow.
If they don't agree tomorrow, I will try the Blau in a high-flow tank (again, next to a traditional one).

Close-up from a minute ago, as I already shared the FTS that would have been demanded had I not posted one above.  I'd say the traditional drop checker looks greener than the Blau already but I could be wrong.



 and see if it's any different.


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## Zeus. (8 Nov 2020)

The Blau 'U' Bend one is a poor design as it has limited surface area at the solution level, it will take a long...... time to change colour. Reducing the amount of dk solution in it will reduce the time it takes too turn


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## lilirose (8 Nov 2020)

Zeus. said:


> The Blau 'U' Bend one is a poor design as it has limited surface area at the solution level, it will take a long...... time to change colour. Reducing the amount of dk solution in it will reduce the time it takes too turn



I had hoped this would not be the case...it certainly looks nice, but it's a bit pointless if it's many hours behind.

However after 20 minutes the traditional one is definitely changing colour already but the Blau remains...blau.


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## Zeus. (8 Nov 2020)

Reducing the dk solution volume by 50% in it will reduce the time it takes to change by half


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## lilirose (9 Nov 2020)

This morning's update. Will spare everyone the huge photo, suffice it to say that 2 hours after lights on we still have extreme difference in colour. I'd say the Blau DC is completely useless in this tank. Will repeat the experiment on a high-flow tank because I neither want to bin the Blau checker (it's so pretty!) nor would I sell it to someone else, though if it's as off in the second tank I have no idea what to do with it other than bin it.


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## Wookii (9 Nov 2020)

lilirose said:


> This morning's update. Will spare everyone the huge photo, suffice it to say that 2 hours after lights on we still have extreme difference in colour. I'd say the Blau DC is completely useless in this tank. Will repeat the experiment on a high-flow tank because I neither want to bin the Blau checker (it's so pretty!) nor would I sell it to someone else, though if it's as off in the second tank I have no idea what to do with it other than bin it.



Very surprising that! It basically doesn't work at all. I would return it to where ever you bought it as I think you have a fair claim, with evidence, that it's not 'fit for purpose'.

Personally I've tried several of the trendy glass drop checkers, and haven't been impressed with any of them. Though they don't look quite as sleek, I find the JBL ones much easier to read the colour from (white background), and they react fairly quickly as there is a very small trapped gas volume/distance to the solution (I don't bother with the ugly sticker though):


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## Zeus. (9 Nov 2020)

Wookii said:


> Very surprising that! It basically doesn't work at all. I would return it to where ever you bought it as I think you have a fair claim, with evidence, that it's not 'fit for purpose'.
> 
> Personally I've tried several of the trendy glass drop checkers, and haven't been impressed with any of them. Though they don't look quite as sleek, I find the JBL ones much easier to read the colour from (whist background), and they react fairly quickly as there is a very small trapped gas volume/distance to the solution (I don't bother with the ugly sticker though):


Use the same one on my 500l


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## lilirose (9 Nov 2020)

Wookii said:


> Very surprising that! It basically doesn't work at all. I would return it to where ever you bought it as I think you have a fair claim, with evidence, that it's not 'fit for purpose'.



I agree that it's not fit for purpose, but it'd be more than 15 quid's worth of hassle to get the shop I bought it from to agree to that. I already have €100 in credit with them that I have never spent because they won't allow me to spend it in their online shop and I can't make the 2.5 hour journey to their B&M shop because of repeated lockdowns/high infection rates in their area.



Wookii said:


> Personally I've tried several of the trendy glass drop checkers, and haven't been impressed with any of them. Though they don't look quite as sleek, I find the JBL ones much easier to read the colour from (white background), and they react fairly quickly as there is a very small trapped gas volume/distance to the solution (I don't bother with the ugly sticker though):



I began looking at alternatives to the traditional because I am concerned about a Betta deciding to try to swim up into a traditional one (as one of my Bettas will do with the bell diffuser in his tank). The one you've recommended looks like it will fit the bill, thanks for that! Now to find someone who will ship one to Ireland!


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## Wookii (9 Nov 2020)

lilirose said:


> Now to find someone who will ship one to Ireland!



Do Amazon not deliver to your area?:

JBL ProAquaTest CO2-pH Permanent Amazon product


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## lilirose (9 Nov 2020)

Amazon delivers some products to Ireland, but with the coming of Brexit we're seeing the red notice on the right more and more often- I wonder if after 31 Dec we'll be told to use amazon.de if we want to use Prime?


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## Siege (9 Nov 2020)

I’d put more solution in your traditional drop checker. Probably same again as you have in their already. It is very low at the moment.

edit. Both types are very low. The Blau one works well but needs a high level of solution.


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## Wookii (9 Nov 2020)

lilirose said:


> Amazon delivers some products to Ireland, but with the coming of Brexit we're seeing the red notice on the right more and more often- I wonder if after 31 Dec we'll be told to use amazon.de if we want to use Prime?
> 
> 
> View attachment 156279



Wow, that’s crazy. . .  I’ve used Amazon.fr, Amazon.de and Amazon.com to order stuff in the past. I take it Ireland doesn’t have its own dedicated Amazon site then? (I couldn’t find an Amazon.ie when I was looking for a link for you).


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## Siege (9 Nov 2020)

Wookii said:


> Wow, that’s crazy. . .  I’ve used Amazon.fr, Amazon.de and Amazon.com to order stuff in the past. I take it Ireland doesn’t have its own dedicated Amazon site then? (I couldn’t find an Amazon.ie when I was looking for a link for you).


That’ll be brexit for you.......


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## Wookii (9 Nov 2020)

Siege said:


> That’ll be brexit for you.......



Lol storm in teacup Steve. Where there’s money to be made, solutions will always be found!


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## lilirose (9 Nov 2020)

Siege said:


> I’d put more solution in your traditional drop checker. Probably same again as you have in their already. It is very low at the moment.
> 
> edit. Both types are very low. The Blau one works well but needs a high level of solution.



Oddly, this is the exact opposite to the advice given by @Zeus upthread- I had it fuller, and he said to use much less, so when I refilled it this morning I used less (no, I would not normally refill every day, I was doing it for the sake of experiment).

In the main I was wanting to share my comparison between the two, thought it might be useful for someone along the line.


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## lilirose (9 Nov 2020)

Wookii said:


> Wow, that’s crazy. . .  I’ve used Amazon.fr, Amazon.de and Amazon.com to order stuff in the past. I take it Ireland doesn’t have its own dedicated Amazon site then? (I couldn’t find an Amazon.ie when I was looking for a link for you).



No, we have always used Amazon.co.uk (or at least, since about 2010- before that we could not order things from Amazon, it looks like it might be going that way again).



Wookii said:


> Lol storm in teacup Steve. Where there’s money to be made, solutions will always be found!



I don't wish for this thread to devolve into politics, but naturally it would be a "storm in a teacup" to anyone not directly affected. But as you can see, I am being directly affected- I would say about 50% of listings on Amazon now display this notice, and more and more retailers refuse to ship here (ProShrimp being one I used to use that immediately comes to mind, AllPondSolutions is another).

There have long been issues with availability of goods of various kinds to Ireland which led me to not keep aquariums at all for 15 years after I first arrived here- I simply could not get the items I was used to, and if I asked for them I was told there was no demand therefore no availability. The Internet only began to change that in the last ten years, but the refusal of many merchants to ship here will turn people away from the hobby, as it did me.


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## Wookii (9 Nov 2020)

lilirose said:


> I don't wish for this thread to devolve into politics, but naturally it would be a "storm in a teacup" to anyone not directly affected. But as you can see, I am being directly affected- I would say about 50% of listings on Amazon now display this notice, and more and more retailers refuse to ship here (ProShrimp being one I used to use that immediately comes to mind, AllPondSolutions is another).
> 
> There have long been issues with availability of goods of various kinds to Ireland which led me to not keep aquariums at all for 15 years after I first arrived here- I simply could not get the items I was used to, and if I asked for them I was told there was no demand therefore no availability. The Internet only began to change that in the last ten years, but the refusal of many merchants to ship here will turn people away from the hobby, as it did me.



Apologies, I didn’t mean to be flippant. I was only meaning to suggest usually, where there is profit available to be made, commercial entities will find a way to exploit it, and I imagine once the technicalities of Brexit have been resolved retailers will find a way to supply to all the areas they did before hand.

In your case if this has been the situation for some time, perhaps there are other factors at play (costs of delivery and returns, general logistics etc), though it does surprise me that internet focused businesses like ProShrimp and APS aren’t willing to deliver to Ireland.


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## lilirose (9 Nov 2020)

Wookii said:


> Apologies, I didn’t mean to be flippant. I was only meaning to suggest usually, where there is profit available to be made, commercial entities will find a way to exploit it, and I imagine once the technicalities of Brexit have been resolved retailers will find a way to supply to all the areas they did before hand.
> 
> In your case if this has been the situation for some time, perhaps there are other factors at play (costs of delivery and returns, general logistics etc), though it does surprise me that internet focused businesses like ProShrimp and APS aren’t willing to deliver to Ireland.



Thank you for the clarification, I appreciate it.  My experience is that the situation in Ireland with regard to purchasing specialist goods (such as aquascaping and aquarium supplies) has always been extremely variable in a way that people elsewhere (UK, USA, continental Europe) wouldn't appreciate in the slightest. Goods that anyone in the UK would expect to find easily often cannot be obtained at all here.  It's better now than it was ten years ago, but there has been drastic movement backwards in the past year.

For Ireland in general, it is actually the case UK retailers don't like to ship here. That was true in 2018, and it's far more true today. I am unaware of the exact reasoning. Plant and livestock suppliers have told me that it's because they can't guarantee live delivery, but I can buy plants from Aquasabi in Germany and get them next day, so this argument seems spurious at best. The very best UK retailers (like Aquarium Gardens) have never shipped here at all. I'm sure each retailer feels very justified in this and I suppose it's their decision. As a matter of fact, I have never taken delivery of dead plants, and the one time I took delivery of dead livestock, the parcel was sent from within Ireland. 

Back to the topic at hand- the Blau DC came from an Irish LFS, which stocks that and the traditional. I reckon Aquasabi sells the JBL, but I won't order from Aquasabi unless I can manage €150 for free shipping, and my aquascaping budget for the year is spent. Luckily the year is almost over.


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## Wookii (9 Nov 2020)

lilirose said:


> Back to the topic at hand- the Blau DC came from an Irish LFS, which stocks that and the traditional. I reckon Aquasabi sells the JBL, but I won't order from Aquasabi unless I can manage €150 for free shipping, and my aquascaping budget for the year is spent. Luckily the year is almost over.



Not sure where about in Ireland you are, but a quick Google brought this up in Dublin:

http://www.seahorseaquariums.com/JBL-CO2-Permanent-Test-Set-2/10748


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## lilirose (9 Nov 2020)

Thanks for that. I won't deal with them anymore, in the main because they list every possible thing they can get on their website, and often as not tell you "sorry, can't get that" after you actually order it. I had a manager there tell me to my face that there was no possible way to keep the website up to date with what's actually in stock (despite the fact that literally the entire rest of the retail Internet can do it).


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## lilirose (10 Nov 2020)

And today we finally have green, but it still doesn't match the other one, though to be honest. they look closer in real life than they do in this pic.

I suppose I must assume that the Blau DC will take a minimum of 48h to indicate a change in the pH? (No, I still don't really want to give up on it, though I likely will.)


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## AverageWhiteBloke (10 Nov 2020)

A lot of this will come down to the surface area mentioned earlier on in the thread. I once put  three types in one tank just out of curiosity, I was testing with multiple DC's to see the co2 in different areas, to be fair the blau type you have there for me wasn't meant to stick on the side of the tank it hung on the glass with the fluid side on the outside of the aquarium which made the colour easier to read. The down side of this was it was also closer to the water surface where co2 content was higher (gas rises out) I also had a large DC and a nano one in the same style as the other one you have there.

 At the end of the test I put them beside each other to see if they would give the same readings and waited until the following evening so they both had plenty of time to level up. What I found was the nano one was slower to react to change, the more surface area of fluid per volume you can expose to the air the quicker it will react. This made the nano one not much use tbh.  Injecting gas has a relatively small window if you want to do it properly, you are looking for optimum saturation when lights come on and once lights come on plants start using up that co2.  You also have to allow for an hour or two lag, the DC will tell you roughly what the levels were a couple of hours ago. Ideally you want your DC to be as close to real time as possible, without knowing the lag time if the DC is slow to react you may be looking at 4 hours until you get a reading that was somewhere from around lights on at which point your lights are going off shortly. 

With a design like the Blau with very little surface area exposed you might not get a real reading until your lights are going out. Measuring using DC's has never been an exact science that people can obsess over. Measuring PH drops in real time is marginally a better option but when you start doing water checks every half an hour you hit the point where you aren't looking at the lovely fish and plants any more which is why I no longer inject co2  I maybe will again in the future though if I ever find the time.

It isn't what you wanted to hear I know as these things do look cool, I have some myself but they are more aesthetic than practical IMO


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## lilirose (10 Nov 2020)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> A lot of this will come down to the surface area mentioned earlier on in the thread. I once put  three types in one tank just out of curiosity, I was testing with multiple DC's to see the co2 in different areas, to be fair the blau type you have there for me wasn't meant to stick on the side of the tank it hung on the glass with the fluid side on the outside of the aquarium which made the colour easier to read. The down side of this was it was also closer to the water surface where co2 content was higher (gas rises out) I also had a large DC and a nano one in the same style as the other one you have there.
> 
> At the end of the test I put them beside each other to see if they would give the same readings and waited until the following evening so they both had plenty of time to level up. What I found was the nano one was slower to react to change, the more surface area of fluid per volume you can expose to the air the quicker it will react. This made the nano one not much use tbh.  Injecting gas has a relatively small window if you want to do it properly, you are looking for optimum saturation when lights come on and once lights come on plants start using up that co2.  You also have to allow for an hour or two lag, the DC will tell you roughly what the levels were a couple of hours ago. Ideally you want your DC to be as close to real time as possible, without knowing the lag time if the DC is slow to react you may be looking at 4 hours until you get a reading that was somewhere from around lights on at which point your lights are going off shortly.
> 
> ...




I bought the Blau DC thinking it was intended to hang outside the tank- in fact, that's what I wanted to try specifically- but it has a glass "post" (for lack of a better term) sticking out the back, which attaches to a provided suction cup, and it will only do so sideways and underwater (as seen in my pics), at least if I want the air in the DC to have contact with the tank water. If I tried to install it hanging outside the tank, the glass "post" would stick out sideways, would not attach to anything, and be useless other than to detract from the appearance of the DC. If you like I'll take it out and get a pic, as I'm certain I installed it as intended . Possibly Blau does another that hangs outside the tank, but it's not what I bought. 

I do thank you for the explanation, I'm well aware that I need my drop checker to take less than 48 hours to react and the reasons for that- that's why the testing is being done in a tank with no livestock.  I honestly didn't start this thread because I needed help and explanation- it was meant more of a product review/experiment than a plea for assistance.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (11 Nov 2020)

> From Aquarium Gardens "This Drop Checker is designed to effortlessly hang on the aquarium rim or can be stuck on the inside of your glass. It’s sleek low profile U-shape minimizes distractions from your aquascape while still giving you a clear Co2 reading."


You can use it in an either or situation mate. Hanging on the rim also causes other issues I mentioned earlier where knowing what co2 levels are close to the surface isn't much use either. The original shape DC's are that shape for a reason, when filled to half way up the bulb at its widest point gives the most surface area of DKH fluid per volume of fluid, the narrow neck causes it to airlock when taking it out of the tank to prevent spilling into the aquarium and the widened bell opens up to more exposure to the gas. 
Measuring co2 using a DC is a blunt instrument to start with,  the shape of the Blau one makes it even blunter. Whether it's "fit for purpose" is like if you buy a chocolate teapot you will get a teapot made of chocolate so no issue there, it just isn't vert good at it. The Blau DC will be accurate at some point in its life like a broken clock is. It's just a case of finding out when it was telling you the time


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## lilirose (11 Nov 2020)

I'd love to see one installed on the side of an aquarium. Can't even attempt it in this tank as it has a glass lid and I'd break the post that the suction cup attaches to as soon as I put the lid on it, and break the lid in the process. But I honestly don't see how it can go on the rim with that post for the suction cup, it would look awful.

Thanks for the long explanations, as I said this is more "experiment that I'm sharing with the forum" than "please help me, I have no idea how a drop checker works or how to use one"... I reckon I shouldn't ask rhetorical questions on a forum.  I'm sure the info will be useful to others.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (11 Nov 2020)

lilirose said:


> I'm sure the info will be useful to others.


Hopefully so, it still is a review of the product just with reasons behind the review


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## lilirose (11 Nov 2020)

Just a couple more photos taken as I permanently removed it from the tank, for the sake of product review.

Even if you didn't mind the post for the suction cup on the DC, this DC is extremely wobbly when balanced on the tank rim- it doesn't "effortlessly hang" as cited in the AG blurb. Even if the DC were accurate, I would avoid it due to the post and the wobbliness. My water line is low (though the DC tip is barely below it), as this will be a Betta tank and there's nothing worse than finding your Betta dried out on the floor after it escapes from a 5mm gap in the lid (speaking from experience).





.Here's one of it in my (small female) hand. I honestly think that enormous post out the back negates any hope of it "minimising distraction" the blurb suggests:





I have removed it from the tank, I'm reckoning it's a pointless waste of DC solution (of which I'm running very low and can only obtain by post right now) to experiment with it in a high-flow tank.


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## jaypeecee (11 Nov 2020)

Zeus. said:


> The Blau 'U' Bend one is a poor design as it has limited surface area at the solution level, it will take a long...... time to change colour.


Hi @Zeus. 

I 100% agree. Poor CO2 exchange and a long path to the indicator solution. It is no doubt slow to respond at both beginning and end of the photoperiod.

JPC


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