having a syringe makes using this kit alot easier. if you buy this buy a syringe also on here or go to walmart there should be one if the cooking area. (where i bought mine)

I have to laugh at some of these reviews that expect a $25 kit to be as accurate as the professional grade tests the city etc will use. These are more accurate than the strips, test more things, and are considered the gold standard within the hobby for testing important water parameters.Why I am knocking off a few stars: there is no good place to stably place the GLASS vials and still know what vial is what while they're turning. I try to place them on a table next to the relevant bottles, but because they are tiny and wet they are slippery guys. I've had the kit two weeks and broken two vials already. CONVENIENTLY they sell more vials. (eyeroll) This is a common enough problem that etsy sells little boards where you can place the vials in a sturdy situation. Come on, API. Stop being lazy re being the gold standard and like, improve your product a little.I'm also not looking forward to having to replace the ammonia and nitrates more often because they use twice as much as the rest of the kit.

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I've been using this kit for 2 months and all seems easy and accurate. My local fish shop has professional testing equipment and results from this kit are similar. It's easy to test, instructions are okay, and only takes about 15 minutes to do 5 tests.Reason for 4 stars is the test tube situation. First, there are 5 tests but only 4 tubes are included. Arguably, one of the pH tests can be ignored depending on your aquarium needs, yet that's not stated in the instructions so it isn't clear that only 4 tests are needed. Second, the tubes are super delicate. Like REALLY delicate so that it's easy to crush them in your hands while trying to remove the very snug caps. Why are the caps so hard to get off? Worse, the seats in the plastic housing for securing the tubes are prone to breaking the tubes just by inserting them. The result for me is inside of 2 months I've lost 2 tubes to bad design.

For the price of this master kit you'd think they would give you at least a couple extra test tubes. One of mine broke at the base trying to pull it out of the container. Only 3 times and the glass was so cheap it broke! I never dropped it plus the cap for the tube is another concern. I expect it will break and slice my fingers soon being it's not made well. The kit itself I like and seems accurate but come on API! Additional tubes are priced too high knowing they too are going to crack or break. Not sure even why I gave this 4 stars. Less than a week and one tube breaks and I am very careful with my purchases. They should send me at least one but I don't have the energy to ask them.

This test kit is not Accurate at all I bought this test kit thinking it was good from all the reviewsI have a reef tank and some of my corals started not looking right and this test kit says my PH was at 8.4So I spent the money for Hanna instruments test kits and found out my PH is really at 7.2 not goodSpend the extra money if you care about your aquarium

You need this one to start a new tank or keep an existing one. The only complaint is that the glass is so easy to break, already lost 3 just to remove the cap after testing.