I’m eventually going to get several of the Hanna Checkers, but I’m just curious which one you’d recommend getting first?
Hanna Checkers
- Thread starter jason7274
- Start date
I use the alk, calcium, and ULR phosphate checkers. The salinity meter is good too
when i first started i got the phosphate checker and then after about 6mo i had to get an alk checker which is currrently where i am
i still manually check calcium & nitrates
i still manually check calcium & nitrates
Thanks for the advice! So the Phosphate ULR is better than the Low? It looks like the Low has a higher range, but a larger margin of error.
That's correct. For nitrates, I would recommend the NYOS test kit. We had the Hanna nitrate colorimeter they came out with recently and sold it after 2 uses. Far too complicated and time consuming unless you are running a truly ULNS. Happy with the rest of the Hanna testers we use (calc, alk, phos ULR, PH pen & salinity pen).
alk salintity Phosphate in that order
I'm using this one from Hannah and am quite happy with it. The tester corrects for temperature automatically and displays that along with the salinity reading. I used a basic analog refractometer for a long time but reading it was difficult unless directly under a lamp and we had to try to correct the reading for temperature manually with a chart. When you are mixing batches of water for water changes and have to keep taking readings as you try to get the salinity just right, cleaning, using a new pipette each time etc. it just made sense to invest in an easy to read digital tester. We eventually ended up getting an Apex and I can also use it to double check the calibration on the salinity probe that's attached to that system. Can switch it to display in the desired format as well (SG, PPT etc):
https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/hi98...MI26ic9oPb8AIVJTizAB0x6wwyEAQYASABEgLtr_D_BwE
I picked up the ULR Phosphate. I’d thought about the Alk or Cal as my second one, but will probably lean towards Alk because my tank is on 5 months old. I’ve been testing Salinity with a refractor as well and didn’t know there was a temperature difference chart. I need to look into it.
This is the page we were using to correct for observed vs. actual salinity based on temperature. It's pretty simple: https://www.hamzasreef.com/Contents/Calculators/SalinityCorrection.php
Considering how small the amount of water is that you are adding to the refractometer though, the water droplet temperature will likely change very quickly from what it was in the tank when it touches the glass/prism to the temperature of the refractometer. It's probably still better to correct for temperature, but readings in the winter where the refractometer it's landing on may be colder than the tank water will probably yield less accurate results. I would think it's still better to try to correct for temperature than not. Maybe others can chime in on that here.
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