A thread tracking the incidence of seneye nh3 misreads

brandon429

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there are two more, I want to log these in one thread so we can begin patterning.
I’ll go find the others

in no way does that reef above have tenths ppm nh3 but thats not been proven, yet.
 

wonroc

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Think this is accurate? Less plugs the better for me.

41vDFREHS5L._AC_SY400_.jpg
 
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brandon429

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#2

seneye themselves confirmed misread. Reef tanks don’t carry tenths ppm nh3 for days. That’s not proven but I bet we can


 
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brandon429

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*when a seneye is working and calibrated it shows what mindstream used to show for nh3 trending, which is why I still rate seneye as the best we have in the hobby. As with any gear, there are enough out there now we can find malfunctioning ones.


im searching for a time seneye shows high nh3 and the reading is right, confirmed by other tests etc.


when to suspect seneye is misreading: anytime you see tenths ppm nh3 post it here, red alert. total outlier reading I’ve only seen one among all seneye so far.

hundredths ppm nh3 was enough to have seneye corporate above agree the slide or machine was off, your reef should be running thousandths ppm turnover rate which is a function of the massive surface area we all use in a display tank.


if someone puts seneye in a paint bucket of reef water set to .25 then I’d expect .25 true

but in a reef tank, rocks and sand, benthic growths given time to fully sprout, clear water, two weeks plus submersion time after adding bottle bac? Never, not in any reef is the bet.

95%+ of all running seneyes show thousandths ppm conversion rate, that’s our benchmark for errors.

try and do random web searches for seneye showing tenths ppm you won’t find any I bet, link if u do.
 
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brandon429

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After this builds a while I’m going to send to seneye and ask for input, they’re very good about responding. The president of the co responded to my email and was a really neat scientist to be able to chat with considering how busy they must be.
 
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brandon429

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Also invalid! Any seneye showing consistent .001, the lowest possible reading the machine can produce.


nh3 conversion is dynamic and changes relative to other factors in the tank (feeding, arranging things, certain dosers a dead fish etc) and accurate seneyes show trending in their logs averaging always .003-.009 zone.


any seneye stuck at .001 for days is misreading just like the first post up top stuck at .24 for days. Neither of those conditions happens in reefing or a thousand other seneyes would show it. They don’t. Link here any seneye showing consistent .001 rate.
 

Miller535

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Ammonia is difficult. Due to the different forms of ammonia, we get both false positives and negatives. And I think it's also the reason for ammonia reading too high sometimes.

And in the back of my brain I thought I remembered reading that seneye could only reliably measure the one form.
 
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brandon429

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I’m fascinated by the inherent consistency tank to tank packing this much sand and rock lends. up until recently, the advent of digital testers (that mostly work lol) nobody knew how consistent the inherent control was tank to tank


inability to know what nh3 does was hampering our ability to know how filtration works, and by extension sandbed management and all boundaries for reef care, tank moves etc.


the big picture is still unfolding I like finding and working with snippets that hopefully amount to something one day.

i simply want to know how trustworthy and predictable bacteria are or are not.
 

Rip2131

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I have this unit also, and will follow along. So far, I love it. My NH3 is reading in the thousandths. .003 - .005

I will keep a look out, because I have questioned it's accuracy. It was hard to find anyone that even had one, when I first installed it.
 

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As I recall one of the newer BRS videos where Ryan was talking about cycling his tank he had issues with the seneye and it over reading. If you have not seen it @brandon429 you may want to. I think it's in line with what you are looking for here.
 
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brandon429

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Want! Did not know that
very helpful will go see
 
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brandon429

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Rip2131 those dynamic readings within spec I feel are 100% accurate


that matches common tropical reef oceanic data on reefs in Fiji for example, or the caymans, and it follows nearly all seneye readings. That seems to be in line.
 

ingchr1

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Hard to see in the graph but mine has been on 0.001 for some time. When this slide was new it read 0.002 and 0.003 at times.

Not sure how slide age factors into this. I bought these slides back in November 2018. Had the Seneye sitting in a drawer for the past year, except for the times I needed to take PAR measurements. I decided to pickup a mini PC and connect the Seneye back up. Was using it with a laptop, but that wasn't too practical to leave in the tank stand.

My pH has also started to drift up on the slide. Not sure how accurate the actual pH reading is, I think it's reading a little high. It's reading about 0.3 higher than my P4, but I haven't calibrated that probe in a while. I will for the next slide.

1604711852720.png

1604711881114.png
 
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brandon429

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That is very very helpful for us to know, thank you much for posting reference data + pics
 

Dan_P

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there are two more, I want to log these in one thread so we can begin patterning.
I’ll go find the others

in no way does that reef above have tenths ppm nh3 but thats not been proven, yet.
Interesting. Following.
 

flampton

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Has anyone dosed a bit of ammonia to see the change? Has anyone witnessed the ammonia lower at night versus day (pH shift)? After feeding? Adding aminos?
 
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brandon429

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Dan I see what you mean now about doubts with the machine we have nothing to bench it against live time.

i haven’t lost total hope in seneye due to these reasons below but if we had a way for seneye owners to mail a given sample among themselves and post reads that would help in assessing assumed working unit consistency


- mindstream showed nh3 similarly for the months it ran as a measure option, thats the only benchmarking to seneye and they were very close.

- the landslide of seneye data on varying water columns runs in the thousandths ppm spread mentioned above, which matches conversion rates on balanced normal natural reefs it seems... much stronger consistency than literally any other Nh3 view option in our hobby, and by extension what bacteria due (and when) during cycling, tank moves, common daily tracking etc
 
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brandon429

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We also need someone with hach ammonia lab device accessibility to measure against a known working seneye, eventually I’ll find or solicit such a posts w link it here
 
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Dan_P

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Dan I see what you mean now about doubts with the machine we have nothing to bench it against live time.

i haven’t lost total hope in seneye due to these reasons below but if we had a way for seneye owners to mail a given sample among themselves and post reads that would help in assessing assumed working unit consistency


- mindstream showed nh3 similarly for the months it ran as a measure option, thats the only benchmarking to seneye and they were very close.

- the landslide of seneye data on varying water columns runs in the thousandths ppm spread mentioned above, which matches conversion rates on balanced normal natural reefs it seems... much stronger consistency than literally any other Nh3 view option in our hobby, and by extension what bacteria due (and when) during cycling, tank moves, common daily tracking etc
Brandon, I understand and to recap the points we have discussed on and off line:

Seneye continuous ammonia (NH3) measurement is a fantastic concept!

The analytical science behind the device is a bit obscure. Unlike Hanna, the Seneye manufacturers are shy about providing the 95% confidence interval and response time for their device. Also, how important is water flow for the device’s response time?

We have started to wonder about the device’s failure rate and the lack of any warning when it has failed.

To date, we have little information validating that the device works. It seems to agree with what we think should be happening.

I think Seneye users need an inexpensive test platform to validate their unit is working properly. Is the manufacturer inclined to help us?

The cost of the device is just high enough to discourage buying one to validate it, though I am tempted. @Rick Mathew was considering a look into his device.
 

ingchr1

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I'm on to a new slide and this slide appears to be working, where the last one was just reading a constant 0.001 for Ammonia. This slide is also from 2018. The pH is also tracking with my controller. I did calibrate the pH probe on the controller and trimmed the Seneye to match.

1605910097584.png

1605910150768.png


I have also started to dosing NH4Cl to bring up my Nitrates. They were very close to zero, only very slight pink on Salifert, and I was starting to see Dinos. Since I've started dosing my NO3 has come up and the Dinos have improved. The samples are more pink, but still less than 1. I am dosing Dr Tims NH4Cl since I had some left over from cycling the tank. I am adding 8 drops a day, 4 in morning and 4 in evening. Per Dr Tims this is 16mg of total ammonia-nitrogen (TAN). I started with 4 drops a day, but NO3 did not increase. My tank has 31 gallons of water in it.

I add the drops (4) one chamber over from where my Seneye is. Here are the readings from this morning when the drops were added.

1605909922291.png
 

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