How to Test Your Saltwater Reef Tank

It's a new year, and your saltwater aquarium deserves the right parameters. Calcium, Magnesium, Alkalinity, Nitrates, etc., these are the building blocks for a healthy reef tank. Water Testing kits help make sure your reef tank parameters are exactly where they need to be. They make the difference between a reef that is failing, one that is simply alive, and one that is thriving. In this video, we go over how to test your water and why each test is important.

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[johnwilliams]

Great great video… do you like the Hanna checkers for calcium and magnesium??? Why or why not thanks

[invaderjoshua]

Honestly if you add a bit of plants to an aquarium you can ignore the nitrate/phosphate portion.

[ManiacalMangoes]

Question - I had been doing weekly 10% water changes for about a year, but it seemed to continually put my system out of whack for a few days. The sweet spot for my tank seems to be every 2 weeks. Could this be due to me having a lower bioload? 25 gallon peninsula, clownfish, Tailspot blenny, yellow watchman, royal gramma and cleaner shrimp. Nitrates seem to always be around 8-9 no matter what I do and phosphates are 0.03. It seems to stay around there even if I wait weeks before a water change.

[paulp]

Would you consider these the most important perimeters to test weekly?

[CLOWNFISH]

Always had high Mag 1600 in my tank and I don’t even dose Mag. Calc reactor stable calc at 420, Alk is 8.7. How do you bring Mag down?

[thomaslasure]

Wish you would give links to the hannah teaters

[kiddt]

Wait a minute. My hannah phosphate tester doesn’t make me hold down the button and then countdown. Am i doing it wrong? It reads like i am testing my alkalinity for a few seconds and gives me a number.

[nftank]

Before I watch this video I don't test anything besides salinity. I do 50% water changes every week on my tank 13 gallons. I remember a short that was uploaded by this channel. In the comment section you said you only do 2 water changes a week. If you tell me to test like how you test my go to would be to add another 50% water change every week. I simply don't want to test because the education behind the reason to test is too low for a not smart guy like myself.

[nftank]

You were unable to persuade me the importance of testing. I know that purple algae is the hallmark of an established tank but I don't care about that. My tank is at the green phase and I have no problem with that at all.