Water Testing

[fallinapart]

OK, the tank 55gal, has been up for 5 months, and since I have some zoo's now, and plan on going to the frag swap this weekend, I suspect I should be test water for other things than the standard FOWLER testing.

What is recomemded testing for reef tanks. I now only test for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, ph & KDH. So help out this newbie.
Help me get started before I load up on corals:p Thanks

Norman

[crumbletop]

For reef tanks you want more accuracy and a bit better resolution than standard "fowler" type tests. pH, Alk, and nitrate are all good to test for. They aren't as critical for softies -- but you want 0 or close to 0 (10ppm or less) nitrate and a decent pH and Alk. The others that are good to test for for a reef are calcium, phosphate, and magnesium. Mg is lowest in importance, IMO, but is critical to keep alk and ca in line. phosphate you want to be essentially undetectable.

With stony corals, you need to keep things in better check in general than with soft corals -- so you might want to start off slowly by getting mostly soft corals, and perhaps some hardy stonies like montipora digis, pavonas, or monti caps. They will be more tolerant of less than pristine water conditions, though they may not color up as nicely as they could.

Hope that helps.

[NeveSSL]

For a little more detail, Norman, you can check this article out:

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/index.php

And for cheap Salifert prices: http://www.geocities.com/hans1976/Salifert.html

:)

Brandon

[fallinapart]

Thanks for information, very helpful. I'll pick up some more test kits this week and start testing for calcium, phosphate, and magnesium. Also will stick to the hardy stuff for now. All my other test have been at 0 or normal range for weeks now, and I do regular WC, so hopefully it will stay that way.

Norman