Water Testing In Your Aquarium

Look in your fish tank. Can you tell just by looking if your ammonia levels are too high? How is your pH? What about your nitrate levels? Just by looking, the only way you may know if these levels are off is when they start to adversely affect the fish. Part of being a good fish keeper is knowing something is wrong before it harms your tank. That is why it is so important to learn how and why to test your aquarium water. Most fish diseases and illnesses are caused by poor water quality. This means that performing a few simple tests regularly could prevent most of the illnesses your fish will face. This article will introduce you to many of the tests you should conduct and why, hopefully helping you make your fish healthy and happy.

The first and probably easiest quality to check in water doesn't require a complicated test kit; all it requires is a thermometer. You should check the temperature of the water daily to make sure it is within an acceptable range for the fish you are keeping. Be sure to know ahead of time what a healthy range is for your fish.

A common problem in tanks is having too much ammonia in the water. This can be caused by not properly cleaning the filter, adding fish medicines, or having too many fish for your tank or filter size. Ammonia tests can tell you when the first phase of the nitrogen cycle is compete (useful for knowing when to add new fish) or can tell you if the ammonia levels are too high and that your biological filter is not working properly. Ammonia levels that are detected by most tests are too high. This means, if the test detects ammonia, something is wrong. Levels high enough to be detected by such tests are high enough to stress, and possibly kill fish. The first step you should take is to make sure your biological filter is cleaned and working properly. If need be, you can add ammonia neutralizing agents; however, you should note that these chemicals can give false positives on ammonia tests. So if you use these chemicals, there is no real way to know if they worked.

Another common test is the nitrite test. While ammonia kits test for the end of the first phase of the nitrogen cycle, these test for the end of the second phase. As with the ammonia test, any levels that can be detected by one of these tests are stressful to fish, and indicate that the levels in your tank are off and you should check the functioning of your biological filter. After your tank has cycled, this test is not very useful. If nitrite levels are high enough in the tank to kill fish, they would have already been harmed by the ammonia levels at the end of the first step of the nitrogen cycle.

An important test to perform, especially on established tanks, is the nitrate test. Nitrate is a chemical produced by the nitrogen cycle that does not get diminished by further steps. With time, nitrate in the tank can build to toxic levels. Doing frequent water changes keeps these levels down, so if they are high, you may not be changing your water enough.

A cheap kit that everyone with an aquarium should have is a pH test kit. This not only will help you select fish that will thrive best in your water (different fish prefer different pH levels), but will also tell you if your pH is changing over time and is still appropriate for your fish. Things such as tank decorations can cause the pH of your water to change over time.

Along with preferring different pH levels, fish also prefer different hardness levels. That is why it may be helpful to have a general hardness (GH) kit and a carbonate hardness (KH) kit. These kits are not entirely essential because general hardness can generally be estimated (do you have hard or soft water?) and carbonate hardness can be determined with repeated measuring of the pH. If your pH remains stable, then your KH is probably high enough.

With proper use of these test kits, you should be able to keep your water healthy as well as your fish.