The Labor Test is Fauna Marin’s answer to the growing popularity of mail-in water tests, especially the elemental diagnostics provided by ICP pioneer, Triton Lab. In stark contrast to the Triton double-vial water testing envelope, the Fauna Marin Labor Tests come in a plastic box, containing sampling devices, several water containers and two tiers of water testing ‘thoroughness’.
The Labor Test will be available from Fauna Marin in two flavors, a Labor Test Business, and a Labor Test Economy, which will offer varying degrees of water testing. The Labor Test Business is a full water testing box which will use a variety of machines to thoroughly analyze aquarium seawater 
through ICP-OES, IDS Multiparameter System, IC ion chromatography UV / VIS spectrophotometry UV / VIS, titration.
While all that heavy equipment may not mean much to most laypersons, it will help resolve a huge catalog of aquarium water parameters including salinity, density, conductivity, pH, alkalinity KH in dKH, yellowness. It will also report the concentrations of a huge suite of macro and trace elements including magnesium, calcium, potassium, strontium, boron, iodine, sulfur, sulfate, phosphorus, silicon, manganese, rubidium, lithium, molybdenum, iron, bromine, chromium, cobalt, beryllium, vanadium, zinc, antimony , copper, barium, selenium, cadmium, tin, aluminum, lead, titanium, nickel, scandium, zirconium.
Finally, the Labor Test Business will also include testing for specific ions in seawater like Fluoride, chloride, bromide, sulfate, nitrite, nitrate, and phosphate. If you’re glazing over at the periodic table of elements that the Labor Test Business will report back to you, the real selling point of the Business class Labor Test is that these results will be interpreted for you by a ‘partner aquarium shop’.
We certainly wouldn’t mind having a qualified professional explain to us the significance of Zirconium in our aquarium water, and what to do about it, but a good many of those elements are esoteric and inconsequential to day-to-day reefing. This is why Fauna Marin recommends sending off the Business Labor Test only once a year, with the full analysis costing $109 in the U.S.
For more routine analysis of aquarium water Fauna Marin also offers the $49 Economy Labor Test which whittles the parameters tested by just two devices (ICP OES and IDS Multiparameter System) and omitting the more exotic elements from the report. European users will be able to send their tests directly to Fauna Marin in Germany while North American users will have to send their tests to Fauna Marin’s newer USA headquarters in Connecticut with an added one week lead time to view results online.
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