ph & calcium monitors

[ebe]

Now that I am moving to the 180 I am concerned about monitoring my ph and calcium with something a bit more accurate than test kits. Also, since the new tank is basically a black hole for money I can not really afford a fancy controller at this point. On the other hand @ $100 a pop for individual monitors, you could just buy a controller? Any suggestions?

Norm

 

[VSpeck]

yea i have a suggestion. Show us some pics.....

 

[ebe]

You know how the ocean is mainly a barren waste land, that is my tank. Just a four lonely rocks and some frags. The fish seem real happy though.

It will be months before I get rock made for the tank.

 

[VSpeck]

i wanna see the barren wasteland

 

[fazgood]

Be sure to read up on the calcium meters before you buy one. THere are a lot of posts that state that they are not very accurate unless you have very stable conditions.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-04/rhf/index.php

I could not find the other article I read about the repeatability of readings that stated how important temperature and other factors were to getting good readings with these.

Faz

 

[ebe]

I did a calcium test last night with my api kit and unless I lost count my calcium is -really- high. Now given the tank is new and extremely low bioload and a few pieces of releatively fresh home brew rock I would expect it to be high. Fwiw, I used instant ocean salt to start the tank. The test hit 500 and still stayed blue. I put in a couple more drops and it didn't turn purple so I just quit.