what should I be testing for/test kit recommendations

[SoK]

OK, my 55 is a lil over 6 months old now. I have xenia, mushrooms, a couple different zoo's, GSP, yellow polyps and just put a hammer coral in 2 days ago for my first LPS.

I test for the basic stuff: ammonia, nitraite, nitrate really only about once a month now. I'm religious on my waterchanges. Every Sunday, 5 gallons. Have my own rodi, was using IO for the first 6 months but switched to RC a couple weeks ago to try it out (I'd heard it was better).

What else should I be testing for and on what type of schedule, realistically. I know everyone says to test for the basics once a week for preventative maintainance, but with everything else you have to do with a tank it just doesn't seem to get done.

The important stuff seems to be testing for calcium, alk, phosphates, and.... ?

Honestly I really don't have the best understanding of what alk is/does. Anyone care to enlighten me? Does anyone test for things like magnesium, strontium, other basic elements? Which ones specifically? How often?

Basically I'm just looking for a list of things I should test for now that I have a reef tank, and how often.

Thanks all!

[dv3]

hopefully someone that really knows will chime in ....but i know you need cal.,mag., and alk. ....you will need to test those alot at first until you start to understand your system ...then you can cut back testing to every couple weeks ...i think ...get salifert from what ive heard ...thats the only only i used ...buy them from marine depot and use ther eprice match program ...i got mine pretty cheap that way

[6ftAsian]

Ph would be good to test as well...

[SoK]

forgot, i do have ph test kits as well

[Loverotties]

Originally Posted by SoK

forgot, i do have ph test kits as well

You can buy a meter to watch that,and you want to test it at the same time every day(different times ,will give you different readings).