How Often

[sic0198]

I have an API Liquid Test Kit. How often should I test...daily, after a water change, weekly?































a

 

[bagu]

up to you

id do it every other day =]

whats with the massive gap with the letter "a" lol ?

 

[sic0198]

a typo.

 

[waterdrop]

Hi sic0198,

I see you've been here on the forum much longer than me and so may have established tanks or may be starting up new tanks.. anyway, hard to know from the one sentence question what the context is, which might allow those of us that hang out in the beginner section to either give some helpful info or to say we too are not sure.

For instance, if you're in the very early stages of a fishless cycle, I might say to only test once daily. If you were in the middle and later stages of fishless cycling I might recommend testing twice daily, 12 hours apart. If you were in a "fish-in" cycling situation I might also recommend the twice daily thing.

For established tanks where you're confident of a good working biofilter, your testing might have dropped down to almost nothing and you might not test until you see something from your fish or tank that makes you wonder a bit, then you'd test. Under those conditions, one might test at the weekly water change or at the monthly filter change.

Or when adding new fish, one might want to increase to daily testing, just to watch for a mini-cycling condition from the biofilter. And then, when everything looks ok, that could taper off again to not testing so often.

Or you might just be asking the question we all wonder about, which is "Should I test at some frequency even if my fish look great and I suspect nothing is wrong?" That's always just a hard question to answer.

So anyway, the context of the question matters a lot... let us know!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

As WD implied with his answer, I only test when I suspect something might be wrong. I know about what it takes for my tanks to stay in good condition and for my fish to prosper. When I detect a possible problem, based a lot on the fish's behavior, I test once to find out if everything is still as it should be. For a new fish keeper, testing is a key to getting the right answers from those of us who try to help resolve problems. In that sense, testing is a frequent thing so that we can detect trends and give better answers. If you are new to fish keeping, frequent testing will also help you figure out what you need to do to keep tank parameters in line as they should be. There are as many factors that go into tank testing frequency as there are answers to what you should do when you have a particular set of results.

 

[cowboy507]

i tested every day during my cycle, now that it is over, i test once a week, even though i know its unnecessary.
Watch your fish, they will tell you when something is wrong.

 

[greenscooby]

I only test mine when it looks like there is somethng wrong with my fish.


Mark.