Liquid or Strips: Freshwater Test Kit Preference?

[sharkweek178]

Liquid all day. They're more accurate and you get more tests for your money. Liquid tests are a little more work. But why wouldn't you put in a few more minutes for a better result?

 

[sharkweek178]

Testing is mostly for cycling a tank. Once a tank is established, I rarely test it. I do 50% water change every week, have fast growing column feeding plants, reasonable stock levels of fish, and I don't overfeed. There's no reason I would have bad parameters. If a fish shows signs of illness then I'll test. So I would always have my test kid on hand for that. But otherwise, I don't see the need.
Now cycling, I test constantly then. I love watching the result change over time until I finally hit the goal.

 

[Uberhoust]

I used them all, I prefer the liquid tests in general but if I want a quick result I will use a strip. With the strips I make sure I keep them very dry and don't pull a new one from the container with wet hands and they seem ok. Nitrate seems to be the most difficult for most test kits, if it seems lower than expected the test was not likely done right.

I find I don't use either much anymore because I have established my water change cycles such that I don't see a lot of changes anymore. I don't add fish or other creatures much anymore either, focusing only on my current fish, so nothing much changes. Also my fish are pretty "vocal" when things are not right, ie they behave and look different if they are stressed. For me it takes only 30 minutes to change 50 to 75% the water on the 75 gallon tank, it takes 15 minutes to go through the water tests, might as well just change the water. With a new tank I will test pre water change and post water change to assess the process, the other time I use the testing lots is when I am trying to raise fry, things can go south quickly in both cases.

On my shrimp tank I test more because I have to mix the water, but those tests are mostly GH, KH, and TDS. I use liquid KH and GH tests then use TDS probe, this gives me a ratio of TDS to the other values and I use that as a quick test. (TDS only tests conductivity so to do it accurately you have to make sure you haven't changed how you treat the tank, changes to fertilizer in particular seem to affect the TDS without changing the GH or KH).

 

[realgwyneth]

Both, but it depends. I know that the liquid tests are more precise, and if you're in an emergency situation, precision is important. But for general maintenance testing for a well-established tank, strips are generally sufficient. In those cases, I'm just looking for stability across test results. If a number on the strips deviates unexpectedly, then I immediately do a liquid ammonia test, and, if necessary, take a sample to the LFS to see if their numbers show an issue. And just to be sure, I make a trek to a different LFS across town about twice a year and get the water tested using their fancy spectrometer thingy. Again, I'm looking for consistency. If I was setting up a new tank (wish I had the room!), I would definitely get the full API liquid test kit.

 

[gilltyascharged]

I used them all, I prefer the liquid tests in general but if I want a quick result I will use a strip. With the strips I make sure I keep them very dry and don't pull a new one from the container with wet hands and they seem ok. Nitrate seems to be the most difficult for most test kits, if it seems lower than expected the test was not likely done right.

I find I don't use either much anymore because I have established my water change cycles such that I don't see a lot of changes anymore. I don't add fish or other creatures much anymore either, focusing only on my current fish, so nothing much changes. Also my fish are pretty "vocal" when things are not right, ie they behave and look different if they are stressed. For me it takes only 30 minutes to change 50 to 75% the water on the 75 gallon tank, it takes 15 minutes to go through the water tests, might as well just change the water. With a new tank I will test pre water change and post water change to assess the process, the other time I use the testing lots is when I am trying to raise fry, things can go south quickly in both cases.

On my shrimp tank I test more because I have to mix the water, but those tests are mostly GH, KH, and TDS. I use liquid KH and GH tests then use TDS probe, this gives me a ratio of TDS to the other values and I use that as a quick test. (TDS only tests conductivity so to do it accurately you have to make sure you haven't changed how you treat the tank, changes to fertilizer in particular seem to affect the TDS without changing the GH or KH).

That's my predominant issue right now—after being advised that my water is likely too hard and alkaline for most species by itself, I'm going to try mixing it with other (haven't decided if I'm going for distilled or RO) water to reach the desired pH, GH, and KH. However, it's starting to become a pain to go back and forth to the fish store and get my water tested several times a week, just to see if my hardness went down.

 

[Uberhoust]

However, it's starting to become a pain to go back and forth to the fish store and get my water tested several times a week, just to see if my hardness went down.

Get a TDS monitor once you "calibrate" it to your water ie 200 ppm is equivalent to 10 GH or something similar then for the less critical phases you can just use the TDS value, measurements take seconds. They are less than an API test kit, but I would get one of those too.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

A tds tester or monitor is a conductivity meater which uses a formula to convert the result into ppm. I have a couple of TDS testers and a continuous monitor on one tank which measures pH, Temp., in C or F and Conductivity or a choice of two TDS settings which use different conversrtion factors.

Pure water is a very poor conductor of electricity. What does conduct electricity in water are the solids dissolved in it. This is why a conducitivity meter (or a TDS meter) reads the total of all things inthe water. This includes ions such as nitrite, nitrate ammonium etc. It also includes salt and organic matter.

In general when testing for HK of GH we can get a result on several scales- most common are Degrees (DG) and ppm. As a general conversion one can use 1 DG= 17.8 ppm.

As noted, you need to be somewhat familiar with the chemistry in your tank to make sense of TDS readings. For example, when I run my filter bio-farm I am cycling many filters going into many gallons in multiple tanks. but I have them in maybe 10 - 15% of that amount of water volume. There are two things I need to watch closely- KH and Nitrate. I am able to use my TDS meter for this. When the reading drops it is because the bacteria are using up the carbonates/bicarbonates which makeup KH. But if the TDS are rising it means nitrates are rising and I need to do more or bigger water changes.

However, in a cycled tank I am looking to keep the TDS fairly constant. Normally, all this takes is weekly water changes and some fillter
media rinsing. If I am not doing the maint., then the TDS are going to rise. If my pH were dropping at the same time I would know the problem is likely related to low KH but high organics and likely other components which are tested by GH. And the odds are good there is nitrate building up as it is why the pH is dropping.

As you can see I can make sense of things using TDS as long as I know what to expect should/could be going on at the time.

TDS is a measure of all the things in the water, but it is not able to break this down into each component. Either one's familiarity with the tank or doing further testing should provide the answer. Even a basic understanding of what is up in a tank should point one in the right direction for choosing which type of further testing is likely needed.

edited for a ton of typos