Water treatment and test kit

**fai** · 9th Jul 2015, 19:49

Hi,
With so many brand and type of chemical on the market, I'm confuse as to what is effective and good to use.
Can you guys recommend me something to treat our PUB tap water prior to aquarium use?
Another issue is, other that pH and nitrate, what other parameters should be tested? Can recommend the test kit to test all the parameter?

Thanks.

**Urban Aquaria** · 9th Jul 2015, 22:01

For de-chlorinator solution, go for Seachem Prime, its a tried and tested product.

For measuring the main parameters, ie. Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate and PH, go for API Freshwater Master Test Kit, also a tried and tested brand.

You can also test for other parameters like GH, KH, Phosphates etc (API has test kits for those too), those are usually optional unless you are keeping certain shrimp species or measuring fertilizer dosing effectiveness.

**kinaniya** · 10th Jul 2015, 10:48

Hi UA, is Seachem Safe advisable to use too as it is more cost effective in long run and is the powder form of Prime? Anything that we need to take note on it? Thanks.

**Urban Aquaria** · 10th Jul 2015, 14:47

Originally Posted by kinaniya

Hi UA, is Seachem Safe advisable to use too as it is more cost effective in long run and is the powder form of Prime? Anything that we need to take note on it? Thanks.

Yes, you can also use Seachem Safe to de-chlorinate the water too, it is in powder form so works out cheaper if you have large volumes of water to treat. Its very concentrated though, so you have to be careful not to overdose it in smaller volumes of water.

Do note that based on Q&A info from Seachem, while Safe does the same job of treating chlorine/chloramine and detoxifying ammonia... it does not have the additional components which specifically help promote the fish protective slime coat and detoxify heavy metals (due to those components not being able to be synthesized in powder form), so there are some differences in features compared to Prime.

Here is the info on the differences from Seachem: http://www.seachem.com/support/forum...ead.php?t=7131