Aquarium Fish Blog
  • Home
  • Aquarium Accessories
  • Aquarium Care
  • Aquarium Fish Disease
  • Aquarium Plants
  • Aquarium Fish Reviews
    • Barkish Water Fish
    • Fresh Water Fish
    • Marine Fish
Home  /  Aquarium Accessories • Aquarium Care  /  Aquarium Test Kits – How can use for your home aquarium

Aquarium Test Kits – How can use for your home aquarium

Administrator June 06, 2008 Aquarium Accessories, Aquarium Care Leave a Comment
Aquarium Test Kits - How can use for your home aquarium

Table of Contents

  • How can use aquarium test kits in your home aquarium?
    • Temperature fact

How can use aquarium test kits in your home aquarium?

Aquarium test kits is a very important part of keeping fish in aquariums is testing the water periodically.
There are many different types of aquarium test kits out there and it can be confusing in deciding which ones to get and what to test for in your fish tank.

Aquarium Test Kits - How can use for your home aquarium

If you have a newly setup fish tank, you will want to get and test for at least the following:

Aquarium Test Kits For Freshwater Tank:

  • Ammonia – the first stage of the nitrogen cycle, this will kill your fish if they are exposed long enough to it.  You need to test for ammonia and if you get even a low reading on the test kit, partial water changes are required.
  • Nitrite – will show up in the second stage of the nitrogen cycle.  This too will kill your fish if they are in it long enough.  Again, partial water changes are required.
  • Nitrate– the third stage of the aquarium cycle is nitrate.  While not as damaging as ammonia or nitrite, nitrate at high enough levels is not good for your tanks inhabitants.  To get rid of nitrates you can do water changes, get a denitrator (expensive) or use more live plants in freshwater tanks.
  • pH– is needed to determine which types of fish will go well with your water without using any commercial additives and to periodically check to make sure nothing is too out of whack with the system.  Accumulating organics tend to drive pH down, indicating that you may be overdue for a partial water change.

Aquarium Test Kits For Saltwater Tank:

Aquarium Test Kits - How can use for your home aquarium

  • Ammonia – see above.
  • Nitrite – see above.
  • Nitrate–  use more live rock and deep sand beds in saltwater tanks, grow macro algae in a refugium or sump.
  • Calcium– you will need to test for calcium if you want to grow the purple and pink coralline algae (may need lower lighting levels too) and if you want to keep calcium needing organisms such as clams and corals.
  • Phosphate– can be a limiting factor in algae blooms/growth.  Keeping phosphates near zero can be hard to do because it is introduced into the tank in many ways such as through foods and top-off water.  If you have problems with phosphates, consider using Reverse Osmosis water and feed the fish very small quantities at a time.   Test your activated carbon for phosphates too before using it.
  • Alkalinity– can be a very important thing to test for to make sure that the buffering capacity is in an acceptable range, which is 2 – 2.6 meq/L.
  • Iodine– a pet peeve of mine is to hear about folks dosing iodine without testing first. How can you possibly know if you’re dosing too much or even if you need to dose it at all without a test kit?
  • Silicate – the accuracy of these test kits have been questioned and it is not all that necessary, although it can be a factor in algae growth (diatoms).
  • pH – needed to make sure that the pH is staying within an acceptable range.  I would really recommend getting one of the digital pH meters.  Test your aquarium in the middle of the day and then again first thing in the morning.  Chart your readings to get a good understanding of the system fluctuations.   Too much of a swing could indicate something that needs fixing.
  • Dissolved Oxygen– is a test kit that is not really needed in my opinion unless you’re walking a fine line with an overstocked aquarium.  If you have adequate surface agitation and you use a properly sized protein skimmer on your tank, dissolved oxygen levels should be fine.
  • Hydrometer – The hydrometer will measure specific gravity and it should be in a range of 1.021 – 1.025.

Temperature fact

Aquarium Test Kits - How can use for your home aquarium

A thermometer is another item needed for an aquarium.   If your tank temperature climbs too high, you can use a fan blowing over the top of the water to increase evaporation, thereby lowering the temperature.

Tags: Aquarium, aquarium accessories, aquarium care, Aquarium Test Kits, Aquarium Thermometer, Water PH
Previous Article
Next Article

About Author

Administrator

Related Posts

  • How to maintain Ph and Gh of the aquarium water?

    How to maintain Ph and Gh of the aquarium water?

    January 4, 2023
  • new aquarium

    20 Tips to assemble your new aquarium

    July 11, 2019
  • Automatic fish feeder

    Automatic fish feeder for aquarium fish: the best on vacation!

    January 8, 2019

Leave a Reply

Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Recent Posts

  • 10 Best Carpeting Aquarium Plants for Aquascaping
  • Silk Aquarium Plants: A Vibrant Alternative for Your Aquatic Haven
  • Top 5 Fast growing beginner aquarium plants
  • 10 Easy Aquarium Plants for Beginners
  • 10 Red Aquarium Plants for Beginners

Pages

  • About Me
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy

Archives

  • November 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • October 2021
  • October 2019
  • July 2019
  • May 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • July 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • May 2009
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • March 2008
  • June 2007
  • May 2007

Categories

  • Aquarium Accessories
  • Aquarium Care
  • Aquarium Fish Disease
  • Aquarium Plants
  • Barkish Water Fish
  • Fresh Water Fish
  • Marine Fish
  • Reviews

Tags

Aquarium aquarium accessories aquarium care Aquarium Fish aquarium fish care Aquarium Fish Disease Aquarium fish food Aquarium heater Aquarium Plants Aquarium Plants Care aquarium plants for sale Aquarium Plants Guide Aquarium Test Kits Aquatic Plants Betta fish Breeding Disease feeding Fin rot fish care Fish Disease Fish Diseases Fish Feeding Fish food Fish tank floating aquarium plants Freshwater Aquarium Fish Freshwater Aquarium Plants Freshwater Fish Freshwater Plants Goldfish ICH live aquarium plants marine fish Marine fish tank Responsible Fish Keeper saltwater aquarium Saltwater fish Saltwater tank supplement tank Tropical Aquarium Fish Tropical Fish Water changes Yellow Tang
Theme by ThemesPie | Proudly Powered by WordPress