the cheapest ph tests you can get are the drop type,you just put a bit of your water in a little vial then add a few drops of the stuff then check the color against the chart, if it looks like piss your good i got a kit for 8 bucks down at the garden store but if you look in pet shops they will also have it in the fish section, as far as water goes just use bottled water, o rdistilled works best, but a more cost effective method would be to buy one of those britta water filters that screw on to your faucet or one of the pitchers with the filter on it, as for ph put about 10 ml of lemon juice in your tap water and you will get roughly a 5.5-6 ph
