Testing My Water

[MollyFresh]

Is it possible to have soft alkaline water? The test strips I bought are showing me weird results. The Color is way off only for the total alkalinity and the PH. Everything else is completely fine. I have the Quick dip test strips and it it wasn't for the crappy test kits that don't come with everything (even the master test kit leaves stuff out and it too expensive not to have all of it in there) I would have bought the liquid ones. I'm getting mad because I want to know what i need to do for my platies to thrive but if i can't figure out why the test kit is showing lighter colors than on the chart, i'll have no choice but to buy another one. Is there any tricks to get the right color out? I wonder what causes the colors to be different? I already tried temperature change and that did nothing.

Is anyone has any experiences like this please let me know!

I will put pictures up shortly.

 

[rainydayz]

Is it possible to have soft alkaline water? The test strips I bought are showing me weird results. The Color is way off only for the total alkalinity and the PH. Everything else is completely fine. I have the Quick dip test strips and it it wasn't for the crappy test kits that don't come with everything (even the master test kit leaves stuff out and it too expensive not to have all of it in there) I would have bought the liquid ones. I'm getting mad because I want to know what i need to do for my platies to thrive but if i can't figure out why the test kit is showing lighter colors than on the chart, i'll have no choice but to buy another one. Is there any tricks to get the right color out? I wonder what causes the colors to be different? I already tried temperature change and that did nothing.

Is anyone has any experiences like this please let me know!

I will put pictures up shortly.

I don't use the dip stick tests because they all seem to not work correctly. I use the liquid testers and they have always been great. I got mine at a petsmart petstore for like $40. A little pricey but worth it. Good luck!!

 

[This Old Spouse]

It looks like you've been on these forums a good deal, so I'm surprised you're using test strips at all. They're the next thing to worthless. Get yourself a master liquid test kit and save yourself a lot of worry and headaches!

 

[Smells a bit fishy]

You could take the water down to your LFS, I don't think there is a need to buy liquid KH/GH tests, as they are expensive, and not used all that much, unless you are changing the parameters of it, then you will need to check reguarly.

So my advice would first go to LFS and see what their readings are.