Ammonia test kit question/New tank

[Sugarcane]

Hi, I am new to this forum and need some help. I recently started a 125g saltwater aquarium. I also have 40 and 55 gallon freshwater tanks that I’ve had for about 10 years. I intend to eventually make this a reef aquarium. I put live sand and life rock in this tank, and have two test kits, the Fluval and API. The Fluval has been giving me a 2.4-3.7 range on ammonia, but the API is giving me a 0.25-0.5 range. But when using both kits on the freshwater tanks the results are the same, zero. I am confused on which test to trust, since they differ on my saltwater tank, but are the same on my freshwater tanks. Does anybody have experience with this?

 

[MSB123]

API is generally not as accurate. Make sure you are testing correctelly.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Hi, I am new to this forum and need some help. I recently started a 125g saltwater aquarium. I also have 40 and 55 gallon freshwater tanks that I’ve had for about 10 years. I intend to eventually make this a reef aquarium. I put live sand and life rock in this tank, and have two test kits, the Fluval and API. The Fluval has been giving me a 2.4-3.7 range on ammonia, but the API is giving me a 0.25-0.5 range. But when using both kits on the freshwater tanks the results are the same, zero. I am confused on which test to trust, since they differ on my saltwater tank, but are the same on my freshwater tanks. Does anybody have experience with this?

Welcome, comrade. If you can get seachem ammonia kit for NH3, this is the one you want to keep an eye on.

 

[brandon429]

can you post a full tank picture of the rock/system

 

[FishyFish]

Welcome to R2R!

Do NOT trust API, they will give you nothing but headaches. I started with them too and had a major scare after adding my first fish. My tank was registering ammonia even though my LFS told me it was good. Turns out I had no ammonia and the kit was bad, it even registered ammonia in my tap water! Gave me a major scare at the time.

Salifert and Red Sea are both good brands for test kits. Seachem also makes a really cool ammonia alert badge that you can hang in your tank, I use one in my QT. Hanna checkers are supposed to be good too but they're more expensive. I haven't heard anything about fluval kits but I'm sure someone around here can answer about those.

 

[Sugarcane]

Thanks all for the replies. I’ll see about getting those other test kits.