Visual indicators testing

[dtuma14]

Hey all,

So we all test our water etc etc. but anyone on here actually still old school and use basic visual indicators like noticing clams opening and closing reacting to calcium levels before whipping out the test kits.

If so would love to hear others people have

 

[Dan_P]

Hey all,

So we all test our water etc etc. but anyone on here actually still old school and use basic visual indicators like noticing clams opening and closing reacting to calcium levels before whipping out the test kits.

If so would love to hear others people have

I love this question. It is my version of “what are the ’canaries in the coal mine’ for aquarium health?”

I only recently formulated this when I started dosing trace elements to help my sick Ulva cultures and all sorts of species started to grow like crazy: sponges, fan worms, coralline algae, Xenia. I have mostly fish and large Mexican turbo snails, so the blossoming of life was pretty obvious.

 

[shakacuz]

i do this daily, as i test weekly. particularly, i look at my SPS and space invader pectinia. if any show signs of distress before it is water test day, i do a quick test with my Red Sea testers. Sunday, when i do my water testing, i use my hannah testers and aquaforest mag kit.

 

[brandon429]

I used that method below for ammonia assessment

visual proofing of no ammonia concern vs eight pages of high alert posted ammonia concern

Sustained Ammonia spikes are misreads

The reason you think your reef tank can’t control its ammonia is due to false training from old cycling science. That and you don’t own a seneye on the tank in question: if you did, you wouldn’t ever think your ammonia was out of control...

www.reef2reef.com

it’s a legit technique. Burnt fish act burnt. Corals don’t like being burned, it takes a truly huge amount of ammonia to overcome the per-minute uptake of a cycled system and all those examples were thinking it was happening endogenously, the ammonia spiking. In each case they’d assumed the filter bac died, in water alongside a fully running reef.


*only works for ammonia burn

I’ve never seen it done for other params. Of course we don’t know their levels we just know it’s below toxic threshold

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Hey all,

So we all test our water etc etc. but anyone on here actually still old school and use basic visual indicators like noticing clams opening and closing reacting to calcium levels before whipping out the test kits.

If so would love to hear others people have

For the last 10 years I had my tank up, I only measured pH and salinity and temperature.

I knew from the previous ten years that the methods I was using worked adequately, and things like vinegar were dosed based on tank appearance.

 

[brandon429]

Randy what pH meter or test do you use

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Randy what pH meter or test do you use

I've used many other the years. Most recent w3as a used Orion, maybe a model 420A, like this one:

 

[brandon429]

Thank you, among all the posted meters and reads and calibration challenges I was curious to know which one you chose

good to know among param measures which ones are upper echelon