What do you check and how often?
Do you only check them if you have a problem or do you check them on a regular basis?
Do you only check them if you have a problem or do you check them on a regular basis?
Checking water parameters
- Thread starter sunley213
- Start date
I check mine once a month, whenever a fish dies, or whenever a see a disease or somethin out of the ordinary. I use the API freshwater master testkit.
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I went through a period where I checked every day, and have log books filled with data in order to watch trends with different types of filtration, frequency of water changes and the like.
My list was
alkalinity, pH, nitrate, dissolved oxygen and conductivity/salinity
My parameters leveled out completely with a regime of every other day 30% water changes, and filtration using fractionation, filter socks (rinsed with every water change)and planted sumps.
I now seldom check after years of rarely changing numbers.
My list was
alkalinity, pH, nitrate, dissolved oxygen and conductivity/salinity
My parameters leveled out completely with a regime of every other day 30% water changes, and filtration using fractionation, filter socks (rinsed with every water change)and planted sumps.
I now seldom check after years of rarely changing numbers.
when i first started i measured them every week, but now i don't really bother. I had to go out and buy a kit when i wanted to measure nitrates and nitrites. I always have a kit to measure ammonia because i'm always scared of getting an ammonia spike.
Once a tank is stable and running well I rarely check anything other than temperature and TDS. Occasionally I'll check pH as I use rain water for water changes and keep large amounts of wood in my tanks so it is prone to crashing if I don't keep enough buffering material in there (usually beach sand). Nitrate/nitrite/ammonia usually only get checked if there is a problem.