Do Test Kits Go Bad?

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Hi, I bought a used tank and got all the stuff that they had for it. One thing was a Sera aqua test box marin. I'm not sure how old this is. I'm thinking it could be about 3 years old.

I read some where that one test, either nitrate or nitrite could go bad. Is this true? Any one have any comments on this question or the kit as a whole?

Thanks for your time.
 
Yes, we've had various posts from members who have asked the manufacturer and found out how to read the stamped markings on the bottles to find out the expiration date. The different reagents can last different amounts of time.

~~waterdrop~~
 
Yes, we've had various posts from members who have asked the manufacturer and found out how to read the stamped markings on the bottles to find out the expiration date. The different reagents can last different amounts of time.

~~waterdrop~~

Alright thanks for this. contacted sera and now we wait :p

There was also newer(at least I'm guessing my the boxes) ammonia and a nitrate test, so I think I might start my fishless cycle anyways.

My plans are to:
Test the water from the tap.
Test the water in the tank.
Bring the ammonia ppm up to 5 and test daily.

going to test with all the kits and record them jsut to see what they say. going to side with the "newer" ones if theres a difference.

last night I cleaned the tank and the gravel. I filled the tank with 65 liters of water. Might add ten more liters so that the water line is jsut above the bottom of the cover so I cant see the water line. I also added 33 drops of Prime. It said 2 drops per 4 liters. So I followed that roughly. Will add more to the water I add. Have the filter going and turned on the heater too. right now the themometer on the gladd that it came with says 66F(19c). I turned up the hater all the way to see how hot it will get it. Thinking it could take a day or two to get there.

Does this sound ok? Or should I wait till I hear back from sera. I know how much water is in the tank, could I use the calculator and add enough ammonia to bring the ppm to 5 anyways jsut to get it started?
 
Oh yes, sounds pretty safe to me to get started. Things are not as critial in the beginning anyway, mostly you just don't want to get the ammonia level too high. You can correct things later if you end up having to get fresh tests.

During a fishless cycle especially I often recommend dosing the Prime as high as 1.5x or 2x what the instructions say. This is because water authorities (admittedly not very often, so this is a fairly low risk kind of thing) sometimes overdose the chlorine/chloramine producst they use (their goals are to lower some bacterial count on some distant set of pipes, things like that.) So the way you could view this is that since counting out 33 drops of Prime (or some lesser amount obviously) every time you change water would be a big pain, you will want to find some other delivery device (such as a syringe that has milliliter markings from the pharmacy or even a teaspoon or something) and this frees you up to pick some larger amount (somewhere very roughly halfway between 1.0(what they tell you) and 2x of that) that happens to be very easy to repeat.

The "bacterial growing soup" (that's what I call it to remind myself that during fishless cycling I'm optimizing it for bacteria and that its only misleading to think about its parameters with respect to my future fish - all characteristics of it are about the bacteria) needs to be warm and the current optimal number we're working with is 84F/29C.

~~waterdrop~~
 
Oh yes, sounds pretty safe to me to get started. Things are not as critial in the beginning anyway, mostly you just don't want to get the ammonia level too high. You can correct things later if you end up having to get fresh tests.

During a fishless cycle especially I often recommend dosing the Prime as high as 1.5x or 2x what the instructions say. This is because water authorities (admittedly not very often, so this is a fairly low risk kind of thing) sometimes overdose the chlorine/chloramine producst they use (their goals are to lower some bacterial count on some distant set of pipes, things like that.) So the way you could view this is that since counting out 33 drops of Prime (or some lesser amount obviously) every time you change water would be a big pain, you will want to find some other delivery device (such as a syringe that has milliliter markings from the pharmacy or even a teaspoon or something) and this frees you up to pick some larger amount (somewhere very roughly halfway between 1.0(what they tell you) and 2x of that) that happens to be very easy to repeat.

The "bacterial growing soup" (that's what I call it to remind myself that during fishless cycling I'm optimizing it for bacteria and that its only misleading to think about its parameters with respect to my future fish - all characteristics of it are about the bacteria) needs to be warm and the current optimal number we're working with is 84F/29C.

~~waterdrop~~

Cool I'll get started then. Should I have an air pump on? or should I just have a filter or two going? It came with 2 filters, should I just use one? Not sure why they had two. One looks a lot newer than the other.

I have a baby medicine syringe so I can measure acurately. going to measure out enough to bring the ppm to 5 after I add some more water and another single strength dose for the total water. That should bring the total of prime to a double dose.

Do you know how many drops is a ml or something like that? what I'm looking for is how much prime in ml or cc(same thing I think) to add. I've seen a figure some where like 5ml to 200 liters or somthing like that?
 
Ok so I was just about to do my tests and realised that my sera kit is for saltwater. Is there any of the test I could use?

I have an ammonia/amonium test kit and a Nitrate test kit. I'm gonna use them but shouldn't I have a nitrite kit as well?
 
Even though some of the reagents may be the same, the color match cards for a saltwater kit are not the same as a freshwater kit. WD
 

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