Yesterday I sat down with Christian Krzykwa, Technical Products Manager and George Bailey, Vice President of Sales and Marketing to go over their eXact iDip Smart Photometers. As it turns out the manufacturer, Industrial Test Systems is headquartered in Rock Hill, SC (about 1 hour to the north of AquaNerd). Christian and George schooled me on their iDip 570 nm photometer and it’s capabilities for use with testing water parameters for freshwater and marine aquariums. When I arrived, George and Christian had a testing station ready and waiting for me with marine aquarium water provided by Greg Sowers from Fintastic in Charlotte, NC. We tested the water using a test strip for PH and it literally only took 25 seconds to fill the reservoir with water and run the test.
Below is the unboxing of the iDip 570 nm tester and the iDip bundle which includes a handy carrying case and a section for storage of 6 individual water test jars. Each jar contains test strips for specific strips. The kit provided to us by Industrial Test Systems will test for PH, Nitrate (No3), Calcium (Ca), Phosphate (PO4), Alkalinity (AL), Total Hardness (THH).
Photometer reservoir
iDip 570 nm Photometer
The iDip meter retails for $179.99 and the individual test strip bottles range in price from about $9.99 to $31.49. The bottles include enough strips for 25, 50 or 100 test strips, depending on the type of test being performed. Industrial Test Systems also offers an Aquarium Starter Kit (as pictured above) which includes the iDip 570nm, a handy carrying case and test strip bottles for pH (50 strips), Nitrate (50 strips), Total Alkalinity (100 strips), Ammonia (25 strips), Total hardness (100 strips) and Phosphate (50 strips).
The iDip 570 will also test for Chlorine, Copper, Cyanuric Acid, Hydrogen Peroxide, Iodine, Iron, Molybdate, Ozone, Peracetic Acid, Permanganate, Sodium Bromide, Sulfate, Sulfide and Turbidity. They have a test strip for ammonia in the works. As a very cool added benefit, the meter will also send the data to your computer where it will log the data and store the time, date and GPS location of where the test was performed. We will go into more detail on once we have reviewed and tested the iDip 570 and had a chance to get more familiar with the software.
