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Maybe it's just me but I can never decide which color my test results match...maybe I'm color challenged! It drives me nuts...I think it was around 8 before I did my water change and 7.5 after...is there a trick to reading the results correctly?

Not with the ph kits...but I do struggle with the ammonia kits.

I had to buy a digital ph meter.. wish they had meters for phosphate, nitrate, ammonia, nitrite too.

I did find a test for kh/gh that was suitable though. It's made by red sea I think. After the first drop the water in test tube becomes blue. You put one drop of the stuff in the tube and shake it up , and the water stays blue until one drop makes it turn the "end" color, which is like a tan orange or something. The number of drops you had to use , not counting the initial drop, is how many degrees kh or gh. If only other test kits were that obvious.

Trying to tell the difference between different shades of reddish-orange or greenish-yellow sucks.

Aquarium Pharmaceuticals has a nearly identical GH/KH test kit, except you count the first drop, and the colors are a little different.

I haven't had much trouble with pH or ammonia, and I haven't had much experience with nitrate testing, but AP's nitrite test kit is really hard to read. The only way I could get consistent readings out of it was to dilute the water according to how much nitrite was in there, so as to get it down to the 0.25 to 1 range.

I'm colored challenged as well and it took me a week or two to get used to matchig the colors.

I don't have problem with pH, I have a problem with ammonia. And I think my tendency is to guess low, cuz thats what I want it to be....so I try to have my color-blind husband help...which obviously doesnt. But I have been trying to error on the high side and just deal with it. (Still in the cycling stage)

BTW, I test for pH, Ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, do I need to test for hardness? or anything else?

Hi,
I had the devils own time trying to read the pH
value of my tanks, not to mention the shenanigans
I have to go through to test for Phosphates!

I finally purchased a "pinpoint" pH monitor with
probe, and let it run24/7. I gave up on the
Phosphate test, and purchased a "Master test kit"
that allows me to count drops, as I titrate the
sample and get a color change from yellow to blue
or orange to green. Those, I can see

Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

I have trouble reading the nitrate result from Aquarium Pharmaceuticals kit. I've tried reading it outside in natural day light with not much success. There is even a little change in color if you hold the test tube above the chart over the white portion. It's frustrating!

yeah, check out this color chart. It might seem like quite a bit of difference between 0 and 160ppm, but anything over 5ppm messes with my eyes somehow, keeping me guessing whether or not I have 20 or 160 ppm, lol. http://www.goldfishinfo.com/nitrates.htm

Yeah my pH readings are messed up too ... I find it hard to determine between the colour ranges 7.0 - 7.2 - 7.4 my test do not quite look like 7.0 and certainly not 7.4 so i always stick to 7.2 most of the time it's around 7.0 - 7.2 but then again it always changes with source of light.... Try to keep the same light source for all your readings. I use Hagen Low pH test... they should just make test that stick to a particular colour instead of shades of green, yellow, or blue.... With other tests i have had no probs.

Im colour blind...not completly but enough that I do have trouble with matchng up test results on colour charts.

Luckily I have me mum to hand....bless her

I too get all kinds of messed up with color test kits. One thing you can do (in response to an earlier question on meters) is buy a digital pH meter as mention by another poster. I purchased one for about $25 called the Hanna pH Checker 1. Though its fairly inexpensive there are some hidden costs. If you want to accurately measure pH repeatedly you will need to by calibration solutions such as a 4.01, 7.01 and a 10.01.

As to a nitrate meter - there are some available for about $160. I guess if you justified the reusability of the meter versus the costs and difficulty of use of a nitrate test kit it would be in budget. I am still trying to work on my wife to let me get one heheheheh.