Any Possible Home Made Tests For Water?

[des22]

Hi all

Just was thinking that that, water test can start to get expensive (well at least as where i stay) especially if you want to do regular tests.

Does anyone know of a way of doing home made tests, or other cheaper ways to test for ph, GH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate? Or at least some of them.

 

[mark.w.jones]

As far as I know there are no homemade water testing options and I'm surprised that you say that cost is a problem. The Aquarium pharmaceuticals API freshwater master test kit covers ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH which are the main things you would want to test for. I've seen the kit for around £20 in the UK and there is enough for around 100 of every test in there. This represents very good value for money in my opinion. Also once you have a cycled, settled and mature tank after around 6 months you really don't need to be routinely testing all of those water parameters unless you suspect a problem or have particuarly sensitive fish. I only do a water test every couple of months in my tank and the best indicators that anything is wrong with my water is the behaviour of the fish that live in it. If I see any of them gulping at the surface, rubbing up against things, not eating, acting withdrawn, discolouration or anything out of the ordinary, then I check all my water parameters.

 

[aaronnorth]

i get my hagen mini master test kit from ebay for £15 delivered. from petramos1 (shop is aquacadabra) item# 220272436326

 

[Loony Fish]

i dont know of any cheap ones, but sometimes pet stores will do free water tests.

 

[des22]

I stay here in the RSA, things are expensive cause they all impoted.
Wow only £20 thats around R290 if i had to buy somthing like that over here, at a guess it would cost at least around R700 which is around £48.

I must maybe check out ebay and online stores might be cheaper for me to bring them in mu self.
Does anyone know of realy good online aqurium/pet stores?

 

[Rooster]

API kits are around £15-20 locally... I'd be happy to post one if needs be...

 

[LauraFrog]

What you'd want to do is find out what makes these tests change colour. I know the reagents for pH and ammonia - for pH it's called bromothymol blue and the colour charts are easy to find on the net, but I don't know if there's a cheaper way to buy it than in a kit. For ammonia the reagents are sodium hydroxide and phenol (indophenol reaction). As far as I know the hydroxide is 5M but I'm not sure (where did Dr. Hovanec go when you need him?) Not sure if the phenol is specific to that particular test.
Not sure re. nitrite and nitrate tests. I know they both turn pink. The chemicals you are testing for are:

pH: hydrogen ions
ammonia: NH4OH, NH4++ (ammonium ion)
nitrite: NO2
nitrate: NO3

 

[Corleone]

Nitrate bottle 1 contains hydrochloric acid, at least - not sure if it's the active ingredient or only a solvent. API's site might list all the chemicals involved, but probably not the correct concentrations or preparations.

 

[rhostog]

I believe the Nutrafin nitrite test (possibly others) uses a modified diazotization method. Sulphanilic acid reacts with any nitrite present to form a diazonium salt, then a naphthylamine is added and forms an azo dye, which is pink/red.

Adding a blue dye helps interpret the results, as the colour will change from blue (no nitrite) to a shade of purple depending on the amount of pink present; without the blue dye, the Nutrafin test requires you to judge varying shades of pink against a chart.

Interestingly, a variation on this test was used in the past to detect nitroglycerine. Dodgy interpretations of the results were key to the Birmingham Six case.