What water parameters do you monitor?

[JamieB]

Bit of a general question really, what do YOU guys monitor in terms of water parameters, I don't really monitor anything I just keep up with my weekly water changes and unless something goes wrong I leave the tank to it.

But I am now starting to look into Co2 and shrimp and it seems I should be monitoring PH and TDS.

Do you or should I start to do this?

If so, what meters do you use? I see people not recommending the cheapies on eBay due to their single calibration point etc

 

[JohnC]

Gave up on test kits years ago.

Have the drop checkers for co2 but even then I'm lazy with the fluid changes and very aware they are only rough guesses. I tend to be more on top of them at the start of new tanks while I get the Co2 dialed in.

Use a tds meter as a quick check while doing maintenance but only really to check if something odd is happening without me knowing.

Then if something odd shows or I'm seeing plants not growing how they should I might occasionally use a dip test to work out what's going on. But most times it turns out to be an issue with a filter needing cleaned or hardware not working properly.

Like many here the plants and fish behaviour (and algae) tell me more and faster then regular testing does.

Best regards,
John

 

[Wallace]

I don't. I haven't tested any water for about 3 years.

Like JohnC, I too use plant and fish health as a guide to my water quality.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Very occasional dip with the conductivity meter (every couple of months). It is the only kit where you can just dip it in and get an accurate value. It isn't the most useful parameter, but I know that if I'm in the 50 -175 microS range things are OK fish wise. I use this in conjunction with the "Duckweed Index" to know when to feed the plants.

In the past I've added water samples from the tanks to runs of samples for water testing from student projects etc. but because you are dealing with relatively clean water even with ten thousands of pounds worth of analytical kit, a technician who know how to use it, access to a large range of reagents and several hours of time it is still difficult to get repeatable values for some parameters.

Within reason metals are fairly easy (monovalent/divalent cations like potassium (K+) and Calcium (Ca++)), anions like orthophosphate (PO4---) and NO3- more problematic, and pollutants like pesticides nearly impossible even with HPLC.

The really funny one is pH, in very strongly buffered alkaline water any test will give you a fairly accurate result, and the same to some degree with strongly acidic water. The real problems come when you are around pH7, where you really need to have some measure of the carbonate buffering to be able to interpret values. Titrimetric methods (basically a slightly more accurate version of how a drop-checker or liquid pH test works) are good for this, but you need to set up a burette, have access to reagents and an appropriate pH indicator etc.

cheers Darrel

 

[ian_m]

Temperature and CO2 via a drop checker.

 

[Tim Harrison]

None...

 

[Jose]

If I were to keep expensive shrimp a conductivity metre would be a must for me. If using co2 and high(ish) light then a pH metre is a must IMO.

 

[Jake101]

Just conductivity. Not that much anymore without a good reason, but mostly in the beginning to establish a baseline. No CO2 since low tech.

 

[roadmaster]

River level's,so I know when to go catfishin.

 

[Jose]

River level's,so I know when to go catfishin.