Fishless Cycling

[cornishlass]

I have had a read of some good articles on here re fishless cycling, but I am unsure which test kit go get, there are test strips and tablet kits, but is it liquid I should be getting? I was trying to go fro what I can order through work as I cant get to the shops this week.

We can get the following

Ntrafin (hagen)
Ammonia
Nitrate
Nitrite

Interpet health test kit contains tablet for Ammonia, Nitrate, Nitrite

API 5 in 1 test strips

King British 6 in 1 test strips

Tetra test 6 in 1 strips

Water life ammonia and PH test kits, nitrate and nitrite kits

Are any suitable?

 

[FishAreFriendsNotFood10]

mostly every1 on here would recommend a API Freshwater Master Liquid Test Kit ... you can get it off ebay cheaper than anywhere else

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, I agree with FAFNF, I tend to like the API a tad better than the Nutrafin although it's mostly just familiarity and the fact that the API allows us to have a bit of common lingo about colors here in the beginners section, more than any real differences in the quality between these two kits. I do think the Nutrafin may tend to get fooled by nitrite when doing it's nitrate test a bit more (thus falsely high nitrate during the nitrite spike phase) than the API, and it is definately more helpful that the API changes color on ammonia and nitrite when it hits zero (green means ammonia, yellow at zero, purple on the nitrite test, blue when it hits zero.)

In the world of affordable hobbyist test kits, Salifert probably is the best, but needs to be purchased kit by kit and may have an extra step or two during the running of tests. API and Nutrafin tend to occupy the next level down in the opinions of many of our members and there are other kits then that occupy lower rungs.

~~waterdrop~~