Weekly testing

[duanes]

I test my tank weekly for pH and nitrate.
Once a tank is cycled, I figure there is no need to test for ammonia and nitrite, unless some unforseen event occurs.
But both pH and nitrate are the real instantaneous indicators if something is amiss.
If pH quickly drops, this could a number of anaomolies.
Nitrate testing is always telling, I base water changes, in any elevated nitrate results.
My normal pH hovers areound 8, and nitrates always averages undetectable- (below tests from today)


If either of these varies much, figure its a call for action.
And because I test every river where I collect for at least these 2 parameters, I go thru a lot of these 2 reagents.

Above and below the Rio Plantaneros

Below the Rio Mamoni

Luckily on-line I can buy just the pH and nitrate reagents at about 1/3rd the cost of a full API kit sent

 

[Toby_H]

I get that dip strips aren't reliable for defining numbers...
But I do find they are fine for quickly checking consistency.

I dip them in 2 or 3 tanks per week. I do it often enough I know what they 'should' look like. If anything is off I pull out the API drip kit and do a proper test.

I also recently got a digital PH meter. I found it reads 0.2-0.3 higher than the API drip tests.

 

[jjohnwm]

Fair warning: the following is heresy and reading it may condemn you to fish purgatory.

I find that the longer I am in the hobby, the more I change water...but the less frequently I test water. If I haven't added any new fish, changing the bioload...if I haven't had a large fish suddenly go mysteriously missing...in other words, if nothing has changed...then the readings won't change either. Water parameters don't just randomly change themselves; they are changed not by cosmic rays or supernatural forces, but by other changes that are applied to them. And when nothing else has changed...neither will the water.

Fish living in the water, excreting their wastes into it, will cause a change over time; that's why we replace the old water with new. The more fish are in it, the faster the change occurs. And the more often we change it, the slower the net change occurs. Don't change it when it's "too dirty"; change it before it has a chance to get that way.

Sure, if I were starting and cycling a new tank from scratch, I'd do the testing to follow the progress of the cycle...but I haven't done that for many years, since I always have mature sponge filters or biomedia running in established tanks, ready to drop in and create a cycled aquarium at the drop of a hat. When I moved to this province almost 15 years ago, I brought essentially no "livestock" beyond my dogs, but I did have a Rubbermaid garbage can filled to the brim with active biomedia. I had cycled tanks the day after I moved in, and had to feed them ammonia to keep the bacteria alive until I actually got some fish.

There are exceptions, of course. When I started putting fish outdoors for the summer in stock tanks, I tested the tanks quite religiously for the first few weeks and then sporadically throughout the season. It soon became obvious that well-planted outdoor tanks in sunlight, with low stocking levels...are ridiculously stable. Tests were always...not merely often, but rather always...exactly the same, exactly as expected, no surprises. I can only look at the same colours in a test tube so many times before it starts to feel quite silly.

At this point, someone always says that this method "may" work, but caution is required, and beware of ammonia spikes, and keep testing, testing, testing...but my own experience is that this method always works, without fail. Sure, I don't go crazy with overstocking such a new tank, and I feed very sparingly for awhile, but that's the only "caution" that I employ...in other words, the same type of caution used with normal day-to-day maintenance of any aquarium regardless of how long it's been set up.

Nitrate testing is indeed "telling"...so why not listen to what it's saying? It repeats itself over and over, clamouring that nothing has changed...so why would the test results change?

We all know what Albert Einstein said about doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results. Well, apparently, he didn't actually say that; the quote comes from a mystery novel. But the idea is sound.

duanes , we all know dang well that it doesn't apply to you...you have a logical scientific mind...but, of course, I am thinking that you don't expect different results at all. It simply wouldn't be logical to think that when nothing changes...the results will be different. I have a sneaking suspicion that you just love test tubes and dropper bottles!

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

 

[duanes]

It is true,
I never expect change, in my tanks, or in the places I collect.
And with my regime of frequent water changes, change is very unlikely, but I test anyway, because it became my routine as a chemist.
Hard to break old habits adter 20+ years in the lab.
But every once in a while something does throw curve, usually...... when I least expect it.

 

[jjohnwm]

...I never expect change, in my tanks, or in the places I collect...But every once in a while something does throw curve, usually...... when I least expect it.

Yep, true enough...and when that happens, I'll bet you are aware that something is amiss before you do the test. The test merely confirms what your experience and your observation have already told you.