NYOS Nitrate (NO3) Reefer Aquarium Test Kit

Where to begin at how jank of an excuse this ‘test’ kit is. The dropper bottle is the poorest quality I’ve ever seen to dispense a reagent. The bottle starts dripping with the smallest tilt. Upon trying to shake the bottle, reagent leaked from the seams and splashed everywhere. The 5mL syringe arrived cracked so is unusable. This kit also comes with 2-3x as much of the powder reagent as you’ll need. Honestly the quality and chemical accuracy of this kit is as if it was designed by a group of children doing their first science fair gig where they 3D printed the reagent bottles, caps and syringe expecting it to be completely accurate. Regarding the chemical accuracy of these tests, it’s consistently off by about 5ppm (reads lower than ICP has ever revealed when testing stock solutions in the 5-10 range). The only thing that makes this kit stand out is the color comparison chart which isn’t even that helpful considering how inaccurate the measuring equipment they provide is, always leading to different shades of color when retesting the same water Or stock solutions back to back. Overall a cheap and inaccurate product that uses the poorest quality equipment possible to provide a rebranded, and less accurate, nitrate test than API. API has a focus on chemical accuracy at least, and only requires you to shake a reagent bottle as an extra step when compared to this NYOS excuse of accuracy. It’s funny how all the positive reviews have no mention about the actual product capabilities or quality (dispenser bottle, measurement spoon, how the caps leak every time you remove it) but focus on how ‘easy’ it is to read their good test results when in reality these kits read 1-5 ppm lower. Must be a bit excited over lower nitrate readings. I’ll stick with more accurate measurements over the false confirmation bias of why I spent $25 to get useless measurements. Granted I only purchased this kit once, it was enough to really showcase the money minded strategy of this company.

I found this test to be accurate and easy to read, but the materials themselves are difficult to manage. There are so many pieces and parts to this test that you absolutely cannot lose.The dropper bottle was really loose, in that even the slightest squeeze could mean multiple drops would come out too fast to count. This was pretty bad because there didn't feel like much liquid in the bottle to begin with. I ran out not long after purchase, and I definitely got a lot less use out of the kit than I do with API tests.If the kit cost less I'd buy again, but it's just too much hassle and not enough product for the money.

I like this kit, but I can't say I love it. It is pretty accurate and not too difficult to use but I would like more resolution and I don't like the bottle that is used for adding drops of reagent. The bottle seems like it is more than 1/2 empty and is not the best bottle I have seen. It feels kind of cheap and fragile. I would have preferred that you raise the price, get a better bottle and then fill it. I also have not really fell in love with adding the powder. Its not bad but opening and closing the little glass vial makes me think I am going to slip and end up spreading it around the room. The little vials for water are great. They are the same as the powder, but for liquids they are not as bad since it is only water. And I like the lids better than the test for the API test kits. The color comparitor is beautifully printed and accurate, but I wish it was a little heavier and better waterproofed. It is better than the API test, but I don't love it right now. (I wish Hanna would make a colorimeter for saltwater nitrates)

I have been using this kit for several months now. As one of the other reviewers mentioned, the dropper bottle is probably the worst dropper bottle I have ever used. The one that came with my kit will pour drops out of it when the bottle is inverted without any squeezing of the bottle. You must be very careful with it. The drops also seem to have taken on a light yellow tint that immediately tints your test sample. I'm not 100% positive, but I think the drops were clear when I first got the test kit. The rest of the kit is good. I do like the little sample vials and the color chart. The piece of foam that holds the two test vials needs to be tighter on the vials. I have spilled them a couple times trying to pick them up by the foam even though I know that is not what it was intended for. As for the testing ability, its good. - 2 stars though for the bad dropper bottle.

This is a pretty good test kit for saltwater nitrate levels. It uses a different reagent system than most other nitrate tests, so it makes a good confirmation test if you have questions about another kit's results. As with most nitrate tests, it has limited sensitivity in the low range; hard to distinguish a nitrate level of 0.25 from 0.75, for example. If you're carbon dosing, this can be important. The best hobbyist test kit for low level nitrate is probably the Red Sea one. Hach also makes one that seems to work fine in my hands, although the instructions indicate that it's not for use in saltwater.

My test kit came missing a cap for the test tubes and the dropper on the liquid mixture of the bottle is bad. The test is easy to read and it's a convenient kit to have. Easy to read what the results are with the chart provided.

The Nyos Nitrate tester is a solid performing tester. If you have issues differentiating between color levels/shades using other kits, I recommend giving this one a go.

I run a reef tank maintenance company and decided to try this out after having used Red Sea Test kits for a long time. First off the test kit itself is fairly accurate and I got very similar results to Red Sea. However the kit itself seems like it is very flimsy and you don't feel as if you get the same quality as you do with a Red Sea pro test kit. There is still a bit of guess work between 5 and 12ppm nitrate. But seeing that this kit is significantly much cheaper and even cheaper then the reagent fill of Red Sea I think I'll be sticking with NYOS.