There are a wide variety of test kits and testing equipment that you can purchase and use on a reef aquarium for monitoring a number of water parameters. Some are vital to know, important, good and others can be pretty much a waste of time and money unless you have a specific reason to know their value. Here are the various testable parameters grouped together in these four classes.

Important: do not use an additive if you cannot measure it's concentration in your system. Otherwise you have no idea what the level is in the system and can easily overdose. And that can cause some problems.

Vital

These are the water parameters that should be monitored on a regular basis. Over time you will come to notice with the system if something is amiss, but until then an eye should be kept on all of these. If they are too far from their optimum values then the livestock will start to suffer.

• Temperature
• Specific Gravity / Salinity
• pH
• Alkalinity
• Calcium

Important

These two need to be kept low in a reef tank, as they effect the calcification and health of corals, even at relatively low levels. Should be monitored, but they aren't as vital as the first group above since slight elevated levels will tend to slow things down a bit in terms of growth and health, rather than cause some real problems.

• Nitrate
• Phosphate

Good to Know

The first two in this class should always be undetectable in a mature aquarium. However, during the intial cycling process it helps with understanding of what is going on if you monitor these.

• Ammonia
• Nitrite
• Magnesium

Specialist

Generally these don't need to be known for a successful reef aquarium. However, there may be some circumstances where they should be monitored, such as ORP when using ozone and copper when using copper treatments in a separate hospital tank.

• Oxidation Reduction Potential
• Silicate
• Oxygen
• Ozone
• Boron
• Copper
• Iodine
• Strontium
• Dissolved Organics
• Carbon

Note: when you start out, it is a good idea to test all the parameters you can (in the first three classes above). Then you can work out where things sit with your own tank, how things respond as the levels change, how the levels change with changes in methodology and so on. Then over time, you will get a feel for what the levels are doing in the tank just by the look and health of the organisms in there.

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