Ok, so I've had the Taylor test kit for a few days... I'm out of my FCl test strips but still have some MPS ones left. They both test for PH/ALK so I decided to run them against my the Taylor test kit last night.
The test strips gave me 'ok' readings. Pretty much right between the 2 in the okay range. So then I tested with Taylor... my ALK was 150 and PH was >8. The day before my ALK was 160 and PH was 7.4. I haven't treated the water to adjust anything yet as I want to see if it changes at all.
I must say I am a bit in shock over the discrepancy... as I thought for the last year my water was always perfect (except in times of a needed dump, say after 3-4 mo) then I knew both PH and ALK dropped).