How often do you test your water?

[Jimbo]

You think! They came in a wooden box.

I am slightly old school. I take my swing arm hydrometer to the tropics whenever I go there, jump in the water with it and draw a line on it where the arm floats. I am still using it.

Cool, you have the new fancy hydrometer where you don’t have to fill it to the line !

 

[92Miata]

Answered Daily - but only because none of the answers are really correct.

Testing cadence for me depends on what is going on - when I replace a CO2 bottle, or media, on the calcium reactor - I'm testing alkalinity daily. After a couple weeks, I'll taper back down to every couple of days - but alkalinity is always more than once a week.

I test nitrate and phosphate about weekly - but more often if anything is going on. I very rarely test magnesium (once a month maybe?) and I probably test calcium once every 6 months. Calcium needs to be way out of whack to cause any problems IME, and that generally doesn't happen with a reactor.

 

[polywise]

Do you meant those IR gun style temperature meters?

it's a Fluke hand held tester. I aim it at the tip of my tanks temp probe to compare values.

 

[Philip Chin]

Weekly in the beginning but now after two decades, i simplify everything including no more calcium reactor or SPS. I just change the water every week and sometimes every two weeks depending how busy or lazy I am. My tanks are thriving beautifully and fishes are happy. Now no more TESTING! Everything looks great after a water change! Also a big money saver.

 

[GillMeister]

Daily tests are needed to determine consumption rates. Once you have that established you can measure levels less frequently to make sure everything is stable.

On a related topic, my tank seems to consume about 2 ppm nitrate per day. Is this roughly in alignment with what forum members are seeing?

 

[Jesterrace]

When I first started in the hobby I tested my water constantly and the numbers would always frustrate me no matter what I tried to do and I almost crashed my entire tank with NOPOX so I stopped testing completely except for salinity during my weekly maintenance. I know it can be important especially during cycling or if you are trying to keep difficult coral or super sensitive fish/inverts or are dosing medication! I want to hear your thoughts. My philosophy now is if everything looks fine once the tank is cycled/established and all is well then that’s good…it’s also why I won’t get SPS they are too demanding and needy for me haha. I now believe there’s no perfect number just ideal ones and I was trying to achieve that perfect numbers and it did more harm than good.

My sentiments exactly. I don't do SPS Corals as I simply don't have time for them. I stick with a maintenance routine for small partial water changes and quit testing about 3 years ago. I think it's important that you should at least test every other week for your first year due to all the changes that occur when a tank that is settling in, but once things stabilize you can switch to regular maintenance in place of testing in certain cases. Stability/Routine matters more than testing IMHO.

 

[Lbrdsoxfan]

Yawn... Salinity 24 hours after a water change. Everything else if I notice something's wonky. That's it.

Got suckered into the testing craze for a bit, realized I need to just do as we did it in the what's considered as the caveman days of reefing, just KISS.

 

[tydeck]

The only thing I test is salinity after a WC. I’m really going simple.
Tank Is doing great. It’s a softy LPS tank.

Very happy with this approach so far. I have had basically zero problems. I’m slowly setting up a 2nd tank now


.

 

[Chris Spaulding]

Trident tests daily I test Nitrate and Phos weekly I double check Trident with manual test kits every 2 weeks or so. and send off ICP testes about every 6 weeks

 

[robbiereef8691]

One a week normally

 

[Sink_or_Swim]

I just answered monthly because it's the closest to the truth most likely, lol. Of course I tested pretty often a year ago when first starting my tank, but now really all I honestly test is salinity (more like weekly), and nitrates, etc maybe monthly, if I get around to it. I do have an ammonia alert in the tank too, but have never had an issue with that even when transferring from my smaller to larger tank (used existing rock and other biomedia). I really should test for more, more often, considering I have a mixed reef... but things have been rough this year and I've just been lucky to keep everything alive and growing. One of my biggest new years resolutions is to invest more time in my tank and work on making it something I'm proud of.