Whats your tapwater Phosphate reading out of interest?

You might get away with 25-30ml then Can't see phos levels reaching those levels again too drastically, as long as you don't overfeed.

Your welcome

It starts to taste funny if its off.

Ok. Thats great. Thanks for the advice goldy, much appreiciated!

If you look on the back of the test bottle, near the bottom, there's a copyright date. I'm sure I read somewhere that the test kits are valid for anything up to 5 years after that date (which is probably a good job considering mine is dated 08/2006), but if you're unsure, you could always replace the kit after a year of it being open Think that's what I would do.

i never use one ... just stick my finger in and hold it upto the wind

Yes as it will have all the good bacteria in it and as long as you don't add more fish too soon you should be fine, I did just this with my Rena although the internal filter I had from my 4ft tank was powerful enough to cope until the new external matured

Using the Hagen test kit, originally it was showing between 2.5 and 5. Adding the combi sponge 6 weeks ago has brought this down to about 0.25 to 0.5 (todays reading) and the hair algae seems to have reduced dramatically although I appreciate levels should be nil. Now I've removed the pad, this will creep up again I'm sure.

Test kits do indeed have limited lifespans, but have found the API one is the most stable and mine is over a year old now, I occasionaly have tests done at my lfs to ensure my kit is accurate and it still is.

The API master test kit is a cracking piece of kit.