indydoug2008

Hello,

I'm wondering if some of you experts can answer a question for me. Is there some other system for testing water besides the strips? My problem is that I am partially color blind - I can see blue and red, but telling the difference between different shades of blue or red or green is almost impossible for me. Someone told me there may be some sort of digital water tester...does anyone know anything about that? Or any other way to do a water quality reading without looking at those stupid tiny strips that I can barely read? Thanks in advance for any info you have. (Interesting factoid - did you know that 92% of people with color blindness are men?)

Signed,

Visually Differently Abled (and going blind tryin to read these strips....)

COBettaCouple

There are digital testers, but I believe they run for 100s each.

Lucy

We had one that tested for ph for our pool. It wasn't very accurate. I don't know if the ones for fish are different.

The strips aren't very accurate and most here use the API master kit, but the colors will probably give you trouble there too.

The other alternative would be to take a sample to your LFS. They will usually test it for free and ask them to write the readings down for you.

Good luck.

Shawnie

o my! thats gotta be so hard ....test strips arent reliable either even if you werent color blind.....and trusting your LFS is almost like test strips IMO LOL...can you borrow a neighbor or some buddy for testing ? offer a nice take out dinner or something for a few hours of their time the best IMO is the api liquid master test kit..it has it all! goodluck!

Narcicius

Thats so bad, do you have anyone that can see the tests for you?

sirdarksol

Trusting your LFS is like a color-blind person reading the strips. They use the strips, and they're in a hurry, so they're likely to make mistakes that will affect the reading.

There are some of the digital testers, but they're expensive ($150-260 for a nitrate tester), and they don't have them for all of the chemicals. What I saw were nitrate, pH, total dissolved solids (probably not important unless you're doing a really specific reef tank), salinity, conductivity, and temp.

Reading most of the tests, if you did the bottles, should be doable for you, as they go from yellow to another color and you wouldn't have to look at all of the different colors at once. But the nitrate test, I think, goes from blue to red, which, if I'm reading you right, would look all the same to you.

All I can think of is to have someone else read the numbers. Once your aquarium is cycled (if it isn't already) and you figure out how much of a water change you need to do to keep your nitrates down, you can get away with not testing the water constantly. I haven't done a test in about two months (not ideal, but none of my tanks have been showing any signs of illness, and all are well established). I try to do them once a month, just to keep an eye on things.

Lucy

Sorry, my LFS is accurate in testing, thought it was a good alternative.
I have a digital ph tester and it is way off compared to the API, I don't trust it.

sirdarksol

I've seen the digital pH testers before. They have them for something like $30 at garden stores. I don't trust them at all. On the other hand, the $300 pH tester that I saw at Drs Foster and Smith are likely much more accurate. I'm not positive of that, but the company would likely go out of business if they sold something that expensive that didn't work.

You've probably got the only LFS in existence that uses accurate tests, then. Every LFS that I've been to just uses the little strips, which are notorious for being inaccurate, and can be made more so if someone is in a hurry to do the test.

Lucy

Yeah, it was a shocker, they used the liquid test.
I actually knew my water parameters before I went in .

I even over heard the guy tell someone their water was not ready for fish.

It was new guy, I wonder how long he'll last. lol

sirdarksol

Hopefully a long time. Hopefully this is just normal for the store.

That's awesome, Lucy.

pepetj

You could use the Tetra test for NO2 -nitrites- since you could tell yellow (OK) from red (Spike). As for Ph, you could get one pocket-meter like the Milwaukee Instruments Digital pH Meter, battery operated, with digital readings (around 40USD); for Nitrate and Ammonia, but only for freshwater use, there are digital meters: the Fishlab digital Nitrate meter (very expensive: around 500 UK pounds) and the Fishlab digital Ammonium meter (same price).
I guess you could use someone else's help and get the API test everyone in this forum seems to use (me included as soon as I'm done with my Tetra Laborett).
Keep it up! Pepe