Education Testkit

Yes, we do! We offer a range of resources designed specifically for educators, including our Education Testkit, which is perfect for classroom use. You can explore our educational resources here and reach out to us directly if you’d like more support in getting started.

We love engaging with students about water stewardship and what it means to be a Water Ranger! We’re actively seeking educators to help us refine our curriculum on water testing. If you’d like us to visit, please contact us. Keep in mind, while we have testers across North America, we’re based in the Vancouver, Ottawa, and Montreal regions, so travel costs may apply.

Check out out parameters page for an in depth description and protocol to our testing parameters!

Water Rangers conductivity meters measure the conductivity of freshwater in µS, or microsiemens.

Water will measure different results of conductivity depending on it’s condition, shown below;

For more an introduction, our protocol, and additional information regarding conductivity, we encourage you to visit our conductivity parameter page!

Water Rangers measures dissolved oxygen, or DO2, in milligrams/litre.

Different measurements of DO2 will mean different circumstances for life in a water body, shown below;

• 0-2 mg/L: not enough oxygen to support life
• 2-4 mg/L: only a few fish and aquatic insects can survive
• 4-7 mg/L: good for many aquatic animals, low for cold water fish
• 7-11 mg/L: very good for most stream fish

For more an introduction, our protocol, and additional information regarding dissolved oxygen, we encourage you to visit our dissolved oxygen parameter page!

For optimal results, E.coli tests require an incubator. We don’t currently sell supplies that test for E.coli, but we may one day. Learn more about E.coli here.

If you’re looking for an E.coli test, we recommend TapScore.

Just like with phosphates, this is another parameter where the tests we’ve tried aren’t sensitive enough unless you’re in a pollution event. Probes we’ve seen don’t seem very sensitive, and experts we’ve worked with aren’t sure how accurate they are.

We encourage our testers to browse our affiliate Tap Score’s testing services, which include products for phosphates!

We are currently conducting research involving tests for high level phosphates, but have yet to find tests that we’re happy with. Field tests that are currently available on the market can you let you know if phosphates are present, but can’t tell you to what extent they are present. In other words, they’re not quite sensitive enough to be useful! Also, many of the field tests require you to handle reagents that can be toxic, and that makes disposal difficult, meaning they wouldn’t be safe for kids to use. We are watching this space closely, and working with partners to see if this can change.

The answer depends on how often you use your kit! While our official schedule involves testing once per month, some of our testers decide to go out weekly. If you are going to test during our official testing weekends, the Freshwater and Compact kits will last well over a year. If you are going out to test more frequently, we recommend that you use some of the more expensive tests less often, such as the dissolved oxygen kit.