Review on Enhanced Aquarium Test Kit – Tetra EasyStrips for Complete Aquarium Testing by Diane Beachem

I was new to fish care when I bought these test strips as I unexpectedly got a sick fish earlier this year. For a while I thought these strips would work well for me. I even repeat - I bought them once. My fish has had it's ups and downs in the time I've had it and as a beginner nurse fish I never seem to be able to get it fully healthy. When troubleshooting problems after the recent burglary, a local fish shop recommended using a chemistry test kit instead of strips, as such kits are generally more reliable. Of course, while using the kit, I found that the parameters of my aquarium are MUCH different from what these test strips showed me. For example, the test strips showed ammonia constantly at 0, but a comparison test with the chemistry kit showed it was actually at 3. (I changed the water in the meantime to actually get back to 0). Nitrates consistently showed around 3 to 5, but the chemistry test showed them to be around 0. (I trust the chemistry test result because that reading explains how ammonia can rise to a 3 just a few days after a water change, which shouldn't have happened in a properly run 5 gallon aquarium with a betta fish. A reading of 0 Nitrate means my tank has never been run successfully as a test strip reading of at least 3 led me to believe so (this is very important to know when making decisions about aquarium maintenance and care!) Test strips consistently show a pH of around 6.9 (a good level for my betta who will thrive at 7.0) but chemical testing showed it to be 7.8 (undesirably alkaline for p-bettors). After figuring all this out, I tested my completely untreated tap water with a test strip. The readings matched pretty closely with the strips I ran in my aquarium and the most egregious oddity was that the chlorine reading was at 0. My city is notorious for its aggressive chlorination of tap water. My bathroom smells like a hotel pool when the shower is running. It's pretty much impossible for any reliable test of my tap water to give a zero for chlorine. (My chemistry kit doesn't have a chlorine test for comparison, but I'll consider a possible chemistry test for that.) I was wondering if I received a defective batch of strips, but the expiration dates on both bottles are 2020 and the test results for mine new batches agree with the results of my first. I now find these test strips so useless that they are endangering the health of my fish, who seem to be slowly recovering from their time soaking in the noxious ammonia that the strips failed to catch. I will never know how much the misleading readings from these test strips have affected my fish's overall recovery, but I do know that they played a direct role in his recent deterioration. I will throw away my unused strips and use liquid tests fully now.