I've got a Hach DR3900 in my lab it is pretty nice"Best" well I prefer Hach, but it's well over the top.
For everyday testing API ALK and CA work great. Salifert MG is hard to beat for accuracy at a low price. Nitrate the best I found was Lamotte 3110-01.
I've got a DR2000 at home, old but still great. It'd be awesome to have access to the newest spectrophotometers like the 3900.I've got a Hach DR3900 in my lab it is pretty nice
Sounds great. $4k for the meter alone, then matched glass prices puts it far too expensive for home aquarium testing. Factoring in the reagents cost too, it's almost a break even with long term use of mail in labs, http://uniquecorals.com/triton/triton-labs-reef-aquarium-water-test-single-test-vials-with-return-shipping.html. The main negative I see is the large use of cadmium (nitrate reduction) used at home. I'd likely not perform the test if I had kids.I wish I had one at home...someday when I have a nice big fish room! The 3900s are pretty nice. The new TNT test kits are so simple a monkey could do it and each different test vial has a bar code so you don't even have to setup parameters in the spectrophotometer. You just put the vial in, it scans the barcode, and then selects the appropriate parameters and boom result!
I do too! I don't have one for personal use I just have one in my lab at work. someday when I win the lotto my fish room will have something fancy like thisI wish that I could even thing about spending 4k on something like a spectrophotometer, but a middle class boy like myself is satisfied with my red sea test kits