# I Dip reviews



## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

There are a few chores that are painful when dealing with reef tanks. Testing is one of them. Which results in no tests happening for potentially weeks at a time in our house. Until I look in the tank, see a few corals that aren't opening up and state "something's wrong with the tank". 

Then tests get done.

Anything that will shorten the testing time, or provide accurate readings is a good thing.
Thus, it would follow, that the I Dip is a good thing. The kit is loaded with a tester, several bottles of test strips for the most common tests performed for a reef tank. All that is required is some batteries and the app for your phone or iPad. The app is free. However the group of tests inside the app required to test on marine tanks will cost an additional 28.00 ish. Plus some of the other obscure tests are sold individually as well. That kind of irritated me, but at the end of the day I would have preferred to know I would need to spend the extra money going into the purchase, but I would have probably still bought it.

The process of testing is really straightforward. Put some tank water in the reader, start the test countdown on the tester, swizzle the reagent strip in the water, wait the required time, and when the test is done, your iPad will display the test results in a number, not a colour, no charts to match no trying to figure out if the water looks pink or darker pink.
It's that easy.

However, it does have a learning curve. The app takes some time to figure out how it is supposed to be set up. We had some false starts in some of the tests not knowing how to zero the device, and even though we did double check our readings against the old Seachem and Hanna tests, we were not always coming up with exactly the same readings.

We are going to do some more testing in the next few days and report back.
The kit is under 500.00 but still not cheap. However testing is quick now, and with multiple tanks, it is way more likely we will actually check the levels in tanks, so for us, it is worth it.
Kit comes with 25 strips each of the most common test.
Available through Big Show Frags.

I give this a one thumb up. For now.


----------



## notclear (Nov 5, 2011)

Bigshow is selling it for $399 just the kit. What turns me away is it doesn't test magnesium for now. Also the phosphate test range is 0.09 ppm the lowest which is higher than most of our sps tanks around.

So I mainly test 4 parameters (CA, ALK, PO4, MG) and it won't do 2 of them


----------



## BIGSHOW (Sep 10, 2011)

notclear said:


> Bigshow is selling it for $399 just the kit. What turns me away is it doesn't test magnesium for now. Also the phosphate test range is 0.09 ppm the lowest which is higher than most of our sps tanks around.
> 
> So I mainly test 4 parameters (CA, ALK, PO4, MG) and it won't do 2 of them


Mag algorithm is just about finished for the Marine application. The kit is $399 for boxing day sale only and will jump back to its original price January 1st.


----------



## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

notclear said:


> Bigshow is selling it for $399 just the kit. What turns me away is it doesn't test magnesium for now. Also the phosphate test range is 0.09 ppm the lowest which is higher than most of our sps tanks around.
> 
> So I mainly test 4 parameters (CA, ALK, PO4, MG) and it won't do 2 of them


I agree. Which is why 1 thumb up and not 2. For me the PO4 under 0.09 is not so much an issue because we run a high nutrient tank. And we can't keep SPS. But I do recognize this is a shortcoming. We seldom test mag because our salt seems to keep the levels really high anyway. 
However these tests are on their way, so we know it is being addressed.


----------



## BIGSHOW (Sep 10, 2011)

I'd also like to add the bundle comes with a fully illustrated instruction manual. It is important to read the instructions before starting the test. Calibrating or zeroing out the unit is essential for all measuring equipment that uses a colour gradient for results.


----------

