You are right when you refer to using test kits for monitoring, John. Rather than give you accurate and reliable readings, their best use is for detecting trends (such as monitoring nitrate usage during the early days of dosing). My first tank was tested religiously for the first month or so, and not at all in the three months since. My two new and still maturing tanks have had no testing barring Ammonia, because I wanted to monitor the spike that ADA AS gives out, and I wanted to make absolutely sure it was clear before adding any creatures.
If you trust in EI planted tanks not going through a cycle, and want to budget a little, you could forego kits for ammonia and nitrites. To monitor your dosing, you may want to consider nitrate and phosphate test kits. Use these to test your tap water as well.
I have a test kit for pH, which also doubles up as supplying the Bromo Blue reagent for my CO2 dropper (buy Nutrafin pH 6 - 7.6 kit).
I also have JBL KH and GH test kits, but I can`t remember the last time I used the GH kit.
Fortunately for me, I can test the Nutrafin phosphate and pH kits at work, and they seem relatively accurate. My JBL KH test also seems to be fairly accurate, so I use these with a certain amount of confidence.
IMO John, I would get Nutrafin pH, nitrate and phosphate. The only other test I carry out, which is rarely, is for KH for which I find the JBL kit reasonably accurate.
Dave.
