Drop Based Borate Test Kit.

[waterbear]

I did this test today, and it was not time consuming at all. The colour changes were easy to see and the instructions that came with the kit were concise and easy to follow.

I was referring to the Proteam drop based kit where every drop of titrant is equal to 2 ppm boron (as opposed to 4.5 ppm boron for this kit and the Taylor acid and base demand reagents) so the test is about as time consuming as a calcium hardness titiration. When compared with the LaMotte borate strips (which Piscines-Apolo also sells), which take 15 seconds, it is a big time difference for not really that much more precision since the drop test is not being done with a pH meter as I will now explain. The color changes for bromthymol blue are not easy to determine as they go through the intermediate point and it is very important in this test tot only add enough sodium hydroxide to bring the pH to 7.6 (when the blue first appears). You cannot "add one more drop to make sure the color does not change anymore" since that will give you an inaccurate final titration and if you did not go all the way to the blue color but stopped at an intermediate endpoint you will also get inaccurate results. That is why this test is done in the laboratory with a pH meter and not an indicator dye.