With API test kits, each individual liquid test has it's own manufacture date printed on it. I've never seen one with an expiration date, and I have some from just a few months before that your lots manufacture date.
API could have changed things since I bought my last kit though. I doubt you were duped by Petsmart, but something does seem rather odd.
Mgamer20o0 posted this in a thread back about the time of their manufacture in 2011. I saw the same thing quoted on another site earlier today, and it was claimed to have come straight from an API rep. Another has the same info (written differently) and came from Gary Jones, corporate and scientific affairs manager for Mars Fishcare:
....each reagent bottle has a Lot # printed on
the bottle. The last four digits are the month and year of manufacture.
Example: Lot # 28A0102. This is a pH reagent manufactured in January of
2002.
Pond Care Wide Range pH, Ammonia, High Range pH, Nitrate, Phosphate, Copper, Calcium and GH all last for three years.
Nitrite and KH will last for four years.
Freshwater pH(low range) and Pond Care Salt Level will last for five years.
According to this, a bottle of Ammonia test, lot 83A1211, would expire in December of 2014. So it should still be good, but if it says it expires in 2016, that certainly is weird. I'd contact API and see if they've changed anything recently.
