Accurate Ammonia Test Kit

[rwutang]

i'm trying to find an accurate (ie. easy to read) ammonia test kit but the ones that i have tried so far have been all over the place when it comes to readings. with the red sea kit i have tried, i can easily tell the 0 to 1 ppm of ammonia (yellow to yellow-green) safe levels, but i'm trying to fishless cycle my tank and need to be able to read the 4-5ppm levels and those readings are hard to distinguish (really close shades of green). i also tried the jungle labs ammonia test strips and i using their color scale, i can't tell if my tank is at 3ppm or 7ppm or somewhere in the middle.

ok, so does anyone have experience with any other kits (api, seachem, etc)? i figured they would all be the same since we are mixing the same chemicals together to find out the results, but maybe some are better than others.

if it's not that important to be absolutely precise when fishless cycling then maybe i can just make sure it's at least 3ppm and not worry about whether it's 4-5ppm

 

[Dorkhedeos]

Red sea sucks. API is a lot better, but you dont have to be accurate when you are cycling anyways. You just need to know when it is 0.

 

[always4lora]

Red sea sucks. API is a lot better, but you dont have to be accurate when you are cycling anyways. You just need to know when it is 0.

I had/have API Test strips and TBH wasnt overly impressed as it was sometimes hard to tell , so i brought an API master test kit with all the differnt bottles of solution and it's pretty easy to tell the levels of ammonia etc.

 

[rwutang]

Red sea sucks. API is a lot better, but you dont have to be accurate when you are cycling anyways. You just need to know when it is 0.

i have to agree with you on the red sea kit, it seems like no matter how much ammonia is in the water the color indicator always seems to be yellow and never any shades of green...

but thanks for replying, i guess i won't worry about being so accurate, i'll just dose 4-5 drops of ammonia per gallon and wait till the readings are at 0

 

[Lord Fishheart]

Strip tests are crap, get the API Liquid test

 

[OldMan47]

Like Rwutang said, the colors go from an easy to tell yellow to green shift and become a green to darker green on the color chart. That is quite true of the API liquid test kit too. The good thing to remember is that the ammonia levels are not too critical when running a fishless cycle. It won't allow precise readings to be taken for small changes but you can tell 2 from 4 ppm if you look at the results carefully. I would not try to add a decimal to any reading with that color chart because it would be silly. I think I can tell a 3.0 from a 2.0 but no way I would try to attribute a 3.3 value ever. For fishless cycling, you want the color to look more like a 4 than an 8 after you have topped up. If it is on the 2 side of 4 it may be a bit low but your filter will continue to develop so it is not a problem. You want to get the result as accurate as you can when you are proving your filter is finished cycling but before that a light green will keep things moving along whether it is 2 or 4 or 5.