Sera SiO3 Test — aquarium water silicates test kit — an "ergonomics" review

© 2018 Peter Free

 

21 January 2018

 

 

Photograph of Sera SiO3 Test kit.

 

An introductory note — regarding spelling

 

Sera is a German company. It refers to itself as "sera" — all lower case. That's odd, even by German standards. Written German capitalizes nouns.

 

For my American purposes, I will capitalize "Sera" (in what follows) for clarity.

 

 

Caveat — this is only a partial review

 

I post it now because the Sera SiO3 Test kit uses liquid, rather than the reportedly difficult to measure powder reagents that more commonly available American silicate test kits use.

 

Thus, the Sera kit might be a desirable one. It may more precisely and replicably measure test reagents.

 

That statement, of course, presumes that accurately measured reagents matter to these tests' outcomes.

 

After using the Sera kit, under my reportedly high silicate water conditions, I am not sure that they do.

 

 

Keep in mind that — silicates' effects on brown diatom blooms is controversial

 

Sera thinks that high silicate water matters. Its website (but not its product materials) says that:

 

 

Silicate (SiO3) supports the growth of diatoms in marine and freshwater aquariums. The sera silicate-Test allows monitoring the silicate level reliably and easily.

 

Silicate levels above 1 mg/l (ppm) should be bound with sera marin silicate clear (fresh and marine water).

 

© 2018 sera, sera silicate-Test (SiO3), www.sera.de (visited 21 January 2018)

 

 

Some expert aquarists hold that silicate levels do not matter in promoting blooms, when tanks are in otherwise good balance.

 

I certainly have trouble believing Sera's claim that 1 milligram (silicates) per liter is threshold problematic.

 

Why not 1.5 or 0.85 mg/liter?

 

Given that there is no capitalistic pay off to being scientifically accurate or even marginally precise about this topic, I am skeptical that anybody has (even mildly persuasively) investigated the chemistry and biochemistry involved.

 

Furthermore, silicates and phosphates tend to get clumped together in most aquarium discussions, which (to me) conflates two chemically and biochemically different problems.

 

Evidently the conflaters think that because both conditions presumably contribute to "algae" blooms, one can be vague regarding the nature of the water and physiological biochemistry involved.

 

 

With all this ambiguity — why buy the Test kit?

 

I bought the Sera SiO3 Test as part of an unscientific experiment on my part. I am attempting to control repeated brown diatom blooms in a pH 8.2 fresh (and very hard) water tank. I got tired of the interminably contradictory babble on the Internet regarding this problem.

 

I will be experimenting with Sera's Silicate Clear media to see (i) whether it impacts the Test results and (ii) whether a purported reduction in silicates impacts diatom blooms.

 

 

This review covers only the ergonomics of using the Sera test

 

I will not be assessing:

 

(a) its precision

 

or

 

(b) what one can do about the supposedly high silicate water levels that it uncovers.

 

 

What's in the Sera SiO3 Test kit?

 

The Test kit comes with three small plastic bottles and a 20 milliliter (plus) test vial. Vial gradations are marked in 2 — 5 — 10 — 15 — 20 ml increments. Evidently, Sera uses the same vial in its other test kits.

 

For the silicates test, the 10 ml mark is used.

 

Fill aquarium water to the 10 ml mark and add the kit's three reagents in a described sequence, 6 drops each. Once a reagent is added, each requires a vial shaking. The first step requires a 5 minute wait, before adding the second reagent. After the third is added, wait 10 minutes for color to develop.

 

An instruction sheet (in multiple languages) has a color gradation chart at its top.

 

 

Notice that the sheet shows only five silicate levels

 

Color gradations (from clear to medium blue) are shown for 0.0 — 0.25 — 0.5 — 1.0 — 2.0 milligrams (of chemically undesignated type) silicate per liter.

 

If you do the math, you see that Sera's "milligrams per liter" language translates to parts per million. For those of you accustomed to thinking ppm.

 

 

Whether the kit's seemingly limited test range is significant, I do not know

 

Ambiguity occurs because we cannot be sure, chemically speaking:

 

 

(a) what this and other similar tests are actually measuring

 

(b) whether the measure is accurate

 

and

 

(c) whether the substances (or complexes) being measured have any real effect on aquarium diatom production, under the tested tank's physical and biological conditions.

 

 

I have trouble believing that the silicates being measured are not more complex than simple SiO3 — and further, that they are not chemically bound into a variety of compounds. Some biologically important, some not.

 

 

Sera Test's ergonomics — not ideal

 

Child proof caps are almost adult proof

 

Unlike API's Freshwater Master Test Kit, which contains seven easy opening reagent bottles that easily dispense replicable drop sizes — the Sera kit contains bottles made of surprisingly rigid plastic, capped by excessively resistant child proof caps.

 

Nowhere on the box or instruction sheet does the manufacturer tell users how to open the bottles or how to produce even drop sizes. Nor do instructions advise users that one has to use the removed cap, upside down, to punch a hole in the bottle nozzle's tip.

 

The German caps are evidently engineered to be twisted upward from the bottle nozzle, while using significant vertically directed force. Getting the caps off, without squishing (the reportedly corrosive) fluid out of each bottle, takes concentration and more effort than I think necessary to the design's protective purpose.

 

You can also get the caps off by yanking them straight up, but continuous twisting works more efficiently and evenly.

 

In any event, opening the bottles is more PITA than probably necessary.

 

 

Bottle plastic is overly rigid — which makes drop sizing difficult

 

This rigidity requires noticeable force to overcome. That means that squeezing out a replicable drop size is more challenging than API's better implementation of the same concept.

 

Sera reagents 1 and 2 are manageable, if one concentrates with some intensity. However, the third bottle frequently results in a stream of fluid, rather than drops. Its hole appears to be smaller than the first two.

 

That said, I have found that volumetric errors with the third reagent appears not to influence color results. However, that might simply be because the Sera kit tells me that my aquarium water has silicate levels out the figurative wazoo. It is possible that my water levels are so high that reagent volume doesn't matter much.

 

 

The moral? — Though bottle opening and drop dispensation are more difficult than necessary, I like the Sera SiO3 Test kit

 

I will be experimenting with Sera's Silicate Clear media to see (i) whether it impacts the Test results and (ii) whether a purported reduction impacts diatom blooms.

 

How effectively I conduct this filtration may matter. Ergo, a long search yesterday for reviews regarding media reactors. (Which appears to be a nightmare in itself, with a lot of comparatively expensive garbage on the market.)

 

Additionally, other aquarium tank parameters will be evolving on their own. My subsequent messing about may not demonstrate anything significant regarding the silicate test kit itself. So, don't hold your breath for anything further from me about silicate levels.