How to Use Water Quality Dip Test Strips

Maintaining good water quality is important when keeping fish as pets.

You can use water quality test strips to monitor your water quality. These are easy-to-use water quality testing kits that are available at almost any fish store. You can dip these into your aquarium water to test how safe the water is for your fish.

There are many kinds of tests available so that you can test the water quality in any of your aquariums. There are also different types of water quality testing kits available for freshwater and saltwater aquariums.

One of the dip-type testing strips can test the ammonia level in your aquarium water. Other dip-type test kits can test for all of the following water parameters in your aquarium water : nitrate, nitrite, hardness, PH and alkalinity levels.

After you're familiar with the regular test results in your aquarium, then you'll be able to make an educated guess about what your aquariums water quality may be like, at any given time. This will allow you to test your water less while saving you money at the same time.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Water quality test strips
• Scissors
• Disposable plastic cups
• A freshwater or saltwater aquarium

1. Carefully cut some of the water quality dip-type testing strips in half using scissors.
   
   Occasionally you can use one half of a test strip instead of using one whole test strip, to test your aquarium water. This will save you money by giving you more test strips.

2. Read the instructions on the packaging before you attempt to use the test strips so that you are familiar with the process of testing water quality.

3. Use plastic disposable cups to test your aquarium water in. Don't dip the strips directly into your fish tank even if the instructions tell you to.
   
   Scoop out a sample-cupful of your aquarium water. You only need to test a small amount of your fish tank water. This will prevent any strange chemicals that might be on the test strips from being introduced into your fish tank water.

4. Dip one test strip into the sample of aquarium water that's in the disposable cup.
   
   Read the instructions to see just how long you should dip the test strip into the sample of aquarium water for.

5. Use the guide on the packaging to read the results of the water quality test. Depending on the type of test that you are using, you may have to wait a certain amount of time before reading the test results.

6. Treat your tank accordingly based on the results of the water quality test.
   
   If ammonia or nitrite levels are measurable then you should perform a partial water change and then retest the water. Ammonia (NH3) and Nitrite (NO2) levels should always read 0.
   
   If Nitrate (NO3) levels are too high (above 25 ppm) then you should perform a small-partial water change. If high nitrates are a problem in your aquarium then start testing the water more often, feeding the fish less often and/or changing out more of the aquarium water when performing partial water changes.

7. Test your aquarium water weekly until you're familiar with how the results of the test might turn out.
   
   Keep the water quality testing kits in a dry, tightly-sealed container. Store the container in a dark, dry location. Moisture activates the chemicals in the test strips which will make them useless.

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