Best Digi Water Testing Kit?!?

What is floc, clarifier, stabilizer, cyanuric acid,
algaecide, brightener, dichlor, sodium hypo,
sodium bisulfate, ....??
Lawlocaust
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Best Digi Water Testing Kit?!?

Postby Lawlocaust » Mon 28 Apr, 2008 20:41

Looking for the best digital test kit.. so far only decent one ive been able to find is the aquachek. Its ok buut only tests Chl, Ph, and TA...

If I could find something with Calc hardness, Total hardness, Cyanuric acid, or even TDS it would be great..


:]


chem geek
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Postby chem geek » Mon 28 Apr, 2008 21:55

You can read some user experiences about the LaMotte ColorQ here and an informal poll was taken here. Generally speaking, the drop tests in the Taylor K-2006 kit you can get at a good online price here and here (if still on sale) or the TF100 you can get from tftestkits(dot)com here (that has 36% more volume of reagents so is comparably priced "per test") are more accurate, especially for the Calcium Hardness test. The FAS-DPD Free and Combined Chlorine (FC and CC) test in the kits I linked to is a drop-based test accurate to within +/- 0.2 ppm. The Total Alkalinity (TA) test is a drop-based test accurate to within +/- 10 ppm. The Calcium Hardness (CH) test is a drop-based test that measures to within +/- 10 ppm. The Cyanuric Acid (CYA) test is the hardest test since it's visual and usually only within +/- 10 ppm or even worse at higher CYA. The pH test is also visual, but with practice can be within +/- 0.1 units.

In practice, I have found that the accuracy of the drop-based tests is mostly based on the shape of the dropper and removal of static electricity as described here. I once received a reagent bottle that had an error of around 10% due to its opening apparently delivering different sized drops. I obtained a replacement "tip" that resolved the problem.

You rarely need to measure TDS. If you want, you can measure salt level which is a decent proxy for TDS as most higher TDS levels are salt. For this, the AquaChek salt test strips are accurate (most test strips are not -- the only other ones that are accurate are the LaMotte Borate test strips -- you can read more about this from waterbear's post here).

Richard

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