Red Sea CO2 Indicator

[gkkau25]

I'm sure this has been asked before and I have looked but haven't found an answer. The tester says to use tank water which I thought was stupid, so I used Clover farms(local) Spring water as a base. Added the required amount of testing solution, and haven't seen a change in over an hour( still yellow(ish)- and don't have co2 set up yet).
Is there a better way to to this, and if there is, How?

[Darkblade48]

You are not supposed to use aquarium/tap/distilled/bottled/RO/DI water.

You need to use a reference solution with a known kH, where the only contributing species is bicarbonate. Most commonly used is a 4 dkH reference solution.

[gkkau25]

thanks, was wondering why it wasnt working right.Just bought some on e-bay since I dont have the right equipment to make some and would probably mess up in making it anyway

[talontsiawd]

It pissed me off when I bought this stuff as I drove pretty far to get it and it wasn't cheap. It's really worthless.

You need to get some 4 dkH water. You can find it on ebay for cheap, I get it from GLA myself. You can make it but I find it to be more of a headache than it is worth, I don't have a digital scale though. Well, you can use something besides 4 dkH if you have different needs but that's what most people use to approximate 30 PPM.