API water testing kits that are found in fish stores are used for testing concentrations of ions such as nitrate, nitrite, phosphate, and ammonia in the 0-100 ppm range. Monitoring these ions is important to maintain water quality for the health of the fish and plants in an aquarium. The API water testing kits have a color coded chart to associate the color with an approximate ion concentration. Looking at the color chart, some of the colors are very similar making it difficult to tell whether it’s one concentration versus another. Other ways of testing for these ions include taking samples to labs or using other water testing kits which can be quite expensive. In this project, the API testing kits were evaluated for their ability to measure concentrations exactly, instead of ranges or approximate concentrations, for example could these kits be used to measure 3.56 ppm of ammonia, instead of a concentration around 5 ppm. The information gained from this project could be used in other fields such as river, stream, or lake water testing, middle school or high school science projects/experiments or possibly basic home water testing. Quantitative water testing was performed with the kits and monitored by UV/Vis spectrometry. Beer’s Law plots for nitrite and phosphate in the 0-10 ppm range and nitrate in the 0-40 ppm range have been successfully generated. These results and the results from comparisons to concentrations determined from ion chromatography will be presented.

Quantitative water testing using API kits

251st National Meeting (2016)

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