Testing your water is a very important part of maintaining your aquarium. Just because the water looks clear  it should not be assumed that everything is ok.In a tank that is for fish only or liverock and fish only it is important to test for salinity, ammonia,nitrites, nitrates and Ph.all of these need to be in the proper levels to assure a healthy tank. simply looking at the water will not tell you if  the water is good. Ammonia and nitrites should be  0 in a cycled tank and nitrates should not exceed 20ppm sometimes in a fish only tank nitrates can go very high and start to effect the overall water quality in the process. When nitrates start to increase it is time for a water change. Your test kit will help you know when that should be done. Ph is very important and should be kept at 8.2-8.3 during the daytime  ph drops when the lights are off so the ph can drop several points during the night,low daytime ph levels will result in too low Ph levels at night which can result in fish stress and sometimes death  at very low levels. Monitoring your Ph is simple and will help to avoid low ph problems

If you are planing to have a reef tank with live coral then more testing will be needed calcium,phosphate,iodine as well as other trace elements may need to be monitored from time to time. We have shown below some of the test kits which we use and sell. Test kits can come as Master test kits  or individual tests and will vary in price with the most accurate tests being the most expensive.