Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello all,

I have a test kit to measure ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and ph. What testing kits do you use that are out there that would measure: DO, Potassium, iron, calcium, magnesium?

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There may be some people here with the ability to measure these but most people don't. The people that do are likely to be a bit more than backyard growers.

Potassium and iron deficiencies are pretty easy to recognize. Some plants seem to be more susceptible to these so they can act as indicator plants. Russian Kale works well for me. Potassium hits the older growth while iron shows up in the new growth first. This is because of the mobility of the nutrients within the plant.

I can't say that I've ever had a calcium deficiency in AP and I've only sprayed once for magnesium in all the years I've done AP.

A lot of the ions compete for uptake so it's not just about how much is in the system water but also the relative amounts. It's not like regular hydroponics where you carefully measure all the levels and make adjustments or throw out the solution.

I do have a Dissolved Oxygen test kit but if you design in a lot of splashing or other aeration, you'll never need this. The water can only hold a certain amount of air at any given temperature and if the system is designed right you're probably already pushing the limits of what it can hold. If you do want to measure this then a dissolved oxygen meter and probe are probably the best way. They have come down in price but I'm not sure about the accuracy or quality of the lower end models. YSI is a good brand that I've used in the past.

Maybe not quite what you were looking for but I hope you find this helpful

Hi,

I personally find very useful to test as many nutrients as possible. My tap water is very very soft and has almost no minerals in it. So for example i need to suplement calcium and magnesium.

The JBL brand has iron and magnesium test kits that work very well. For Potassium i have a test kit from the brand "Easy Life". The test is a little complicated but it works well also.
For calcium, i think there isn"t any test for soft water, but you can measure gH and then if you have Mg measured, you can compute calcium concentration from a formula.

For all those test be sure to dilute your samples with distilled water if needed to get the right scale of measurement.