Cheap Alternatives for Water Testing

[Naughts]

I hardly ever test anything. If your fish are swimming around Dorsal fins up, they are happy don't test.

Again, a blinkered point of view.
What you can do with decades of experience and a few fish in 150 gallons is not what a new fish keeper should do in an overstocked 8 gallons.

 

[GaryE]

You're points mostly seem to be addressed at API master test kit fans. I am not one. There are alternatives, even better ones.

I'm in North America, and API is the one we see.

But for a beginner, you need to check to see if you've cycled and to know your water hardness. If you're cycled and have added fish, and a disaster kills the cycle, well, regular water changes are all you can do anyway. If you are doing water changes instead of top ups, your hardness is unlikely to vary from the first reading, and if it does, it'll be gradual.

Now, if you move to using high tech, CO2, seriously aquascaped tanks, or into breeding fish from extreme habitats, then you are no longer a beginner anyway.

 

[GaryE]

Again, a blinkered point of view.
What you can do with decades of experience and a few fish in 150 gallons is not what a new fish keeper should do in an overstocked 8 gallons.

Naughts - there's no need for the "blinkered line".

Yes, I am experienced. Yes, you aren't the first online person to see that as a negative. But we have to analyze where that leaves us.

I hardly ever test anything. If your fish are swimming around Dorsal fins up, they are happy don't test.

That isn't complicated. Anyone can look at fins. It is a key indicator. I was told that when I was eight years old and more or less understood it. Blinkered? It's an essential visual clue. This is one of those lovely debates where we could descend into saying each other is blinkered - either by experience or test kits.

Sad as it, the overcrowded 8 gallon is doomed. You can read test kits, but they will direct you to reduce population. Maybe we are just looking at learning curves. Do you feel that the numbers from the test kit will slowly convince the newcomer whose fish are rolling over that the cycle exists?
That might be an argument for their extensive use.
The result is the same though. The kit readings won't save the fish any more than the experienced aquarist saying the tank is overcrowded and heading for a crash will.

If a newcomer gets bad advice from a salesperson, and is heading for disaster, how can we advise them in a way that steers them to solid ground? Test kits will tell them there's trouble, but if they've come here for advice, they already have that figured out. The goal is a solution, and there are many ways to get to that. We can tell you you need water changes and a reduction in population, or you can buy a test kit, read it and then be told the same basic info.

I suppose the test kit provides a reading that a stubborn or dogmatic person might accept. All forums are full of self-defined experts. I've long ago learned there are places I can go online where I am very low down the knowledge ladder indeed, but the average young poster doesn't always see themselves that way. Maybe you see the test kit results as a fallback for earned skepticism? I tend to think most people are way smarter than that and the few who truly don't want to know ignore everything anyway.

 

[Naughts]

Naughts - there's no need for the "blinkered line".

That was not addressed to you.

I don't see experience as a negative at all, who would?

Ideally we can tell someone at point A how to get to point Z but realistically they need to go through B, C etc. Not everyone is in the same position and not everyone has the opportunities to take the same path.