Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have found a water quality meter at Jaycar and it is on discount because it has been discontinued, it's $230 and would hopefully save me buying both a freshwater test kit and a saltwater test kit if it does enough measurements to suffice.
Does anyone know what these specs mean?
What are they measuring and do they cover the nitrate and ammonia tests?

Specifications:
• PH: 0.00 -14.00 ±0.01
• PHEC: 0.00 - 19.99ms/cm ±2%
• CF: 0.0 - 199.9 ±2%
• TDS: 10 - 19,990PPm ±2%
• ORP: -1999 - 1999mV ±0.1%
• Temperature: 0 - 100°C ±0.4%

Don't cover ammonia etc. Only ph and temp

Yep, pH and temp are the only two useful fuctions on the tester.

EC, CF and TDS are all basically the same function, and irrelevent in aquaponics.

You could buy a cheap chinese pH meter on eBay for probably $40, or a top quality one from a hydro store for $120-$130... and you could get a floating glass thermometer from an aquarium shop for about $3-$4

For aquaponics, you really only need ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH and occassionally temperature.

For the price of $230, you can buy at least 4 freshwater test kit and a digital thermometer. Most test kit on average use will last someone at least 1-2 years of tests.

Damn, it would've been cool to have if it did all the right things.. i never need much encouragement to buy a new toy.
Thanks for your advice.

how about testing salt content? this was on ebay for $10.

I've seen DO sensors but nothing for ammonia, nitrates/nitrates. Are these something that can be measured electronically?

There are sensors available that measure those parameters.... each worth 100's of dollars.... some into the 1000's

I'm borrowing a meter from school currently. Measures DO (and gives out saturation), Temp, and Pressure. Apparently it costs $1,800 CAD


The do it just to give me more data and peace of mind for my fishes and roots. I am on a 24h pump cycle.

Beware the cheap salinity testers on eBay. We bought one and it read about 30% too low and we didn't realise til we lost most of our corals in our salt water tank.

hmmm, $10 for a salinity meter on ebay, you can probably guess how accurate it might really be! You cant realistically expect decent quality in a 2bob watch...

I paid $240 for a meter that measures pH, Conductivity, Salinity, Temperature and TDS, and am very happy with it. The pH measures it takes are certainly repeatable to about the precision of the display, and appear to be accurate when tested in standard buffer solutions. Of course, as with all precision measurement, calibration should be done frequently- I do it every time I want to accurately measure pH.

My GB media of Canna clay balls + river gravel caused a big jump in salinity from 10ppm (my tank water collected from the roof) to 185ppm, and I notice it has crept up a bit more, to 200ppm, probably due to the practice of pee ponics over the past few weeks