A thread tracking the incidence of seneye nh3 misreads

CoralClasher

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My Seneye isn’t reading pH or ammonia correct and they are sending a new unit. My question is with a bad unit is the par meter wrong also?
0679D349-240E-49BE-9660-1D065B67171F.jpeg
 

LRT

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Following. Would also like to hear feedback on par meter aspect as im getting ready to pull the trigger on one.. possibly.
 

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Not an nh3 misread. A post to show decent tech support by seneye, replacing bad meter.
I wouldn't call it a replacement yet. I still haven't gotten it.
 
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brandon429

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very glad to have all the posts

someone with a par meter app + iPhone sensor can calibrate seneye for us Jon, $ in order to know but someone out there will have both devices to baseline


thankfully we have every aquarium picture with healthy fish and corals as the baseline for seneye nh3 accuracy.

when any test kit doesn’t align with clear visual goings on regarding lack of most basic nh3 control, the device is wrong. There isn’t consequence-free lack of nh3 control, its a system wrecker if something so strong the combination overcomes the massive area we employ.
 
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namfuak

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I set up a new Seneye about 23 days ago and the slide has always read .001 without any kind of fluctuation. I will be putting in a new slide in about a week and will update what that one reads.

New slide was put in a few days ago and it's still measuring Nh3 at .001 with no changes at all. Slide was soaked 48 hours in tank water as the directions state. It looks like my unit might be defective.
 
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brandon429

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Can u post a pic of your tank we want to see details to match to the claimed reading, thank you for posting


I do agree something doesn’t seem right unless this is a brand new dry rock reef on day one before adding any respiring life forms
 
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brandon429

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100% agreed I could see .001 being possible on first pic

but not the last pic :) such a nice build up to a perfect reef

you know what I’d be curious to see? Some reef food placed in a cup of saltwater, covered in Saran Wrap so it won’t evaporate and to encourage stench, then set out for a day or two to breakdown


then the meter and slide in question tested off the cup water which by 48 hours will darn sure not be .001 and won’t smell like it either lol
 

ingchr1

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New slide was put in a few days ago and it's still measuring Nh3 at .001 with no changes at all. Slide was soaked 48 hours in tank water as the directions state. It looks like my unit might be defective.
Maybe the calibration point is off for NH3. I discuss it back in this Post #38. My Seneye has been reading most of the NH4Cl additions I have been doing since adjusting the trim.

Unfortunately there's no reference solution that we can use to actually calibrate (trim) the NH3 reading. All though someone may be able to come up with something.

I would contact Seneye and see what they say about your situation.

Here's the screen with the trim settings.

I trimmed the temperature and pH in reference to my Profilux 4 readings. I trimmed them on the last slide and they have remained consistent with this slide. I have observed the pH to drift up the last few days before slide expiration, but I do not retrim to account for that.

I trimmed the NH3 to read what my last slide did. The NH3 on my last slide was reading 0.005 as "normal", but this slide it was reading 0.001. Even when I did NH4Cl additions. The last slide did not register the NH4Cl additions every time, it did miss a few (could be a variety of reasons for this). This slide was not registering any of the NH4Cl additions, it was always on 0.001 until I trimmed it.

1608816846483.png


What my P4 is reading for comparison, very close.

1608816924660.png
 
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brandon429

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I’m going back to reread. I had no idea there was a trim for anything.


I don’t even own a single ammonia test kit, my enjoyment of seneye comes from the collective posts from others and my intention to prove that cycles run consistently, for all tanks, and that cycles don’t vary (from the directions on the bottle number of days to completion) or fail to complete. I’ll be sure and watch out for these fine adjustments now on the stuck reading posts
 

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Most of the miss reads can probably be attributed to mass producing the slides at a reasonable price for a "hobby grade" device.

And the problem I see is that you're pretty much going to get all the people with "issues" and not nearly as many of the people with no issues. Which will reinforce confirmation bias, even if the problems are with a small subset of users.

The only way to really test this is to get multiple testers set up on the same tank and go through a few hundred slides.
I wish there was a cure for confirmation bias!

It seems to drive the popularity of the idea that low nutrients being the cause of dinoflagellate outbreaks.
I have to wonder whether confirmation bias is actually holding back this hobby from solving many issues.
 

Pntbll687

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I wish there was a cure for confirmation bias!

It seems to drive the popularity of the idea that low nutrients being the cause of dinoflagellate outbreaks.
I have to wonder whether confirmation bias is actually holding back this hobby from solving many issues.
I don't think it's confirmation bias causing issues. It's that our hobby is so small in comparison to others that our issues aren't worth investigating for companies or research facilities.
 

Dan_P

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I don't think it's confirmation bias causing issues. It's that our hobby is so small in comparison to others that our issues aren't worth investigating for companies or research facilities.
Good points!

I did not mean that confirmation bias causes issues in the hobby but slows our understanding of them and inventing solutions.
 

Pntbll687

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Good points!

I did not mean that confirmation bias causes issues in the hobby but slows our understanding of them and inventing solutions.
I knew what you meant. I'm sure 100% that confirmation bias along with the simple misunderstanding that correlation ≠ causation hold allot of reefers back from figuring problems out.

And I'm 100% guilty of both, and not just in reefing.
 

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Going back to a few weeks ago when I’m posted about my Ammonia reading being stuck at the highest possible level and everything in tank healthy.

I was asked to send pics to Seneye customer service if the device and the slide. They said the device was not reading the slide correctly and that they would send me a new device.

I was then asked to mail my defective device to a distributor in Canada (I’m in RI, USA) and had to pay $25 for this which they would not reimburse or send me an extra set of slides or anything.

After I let them know I shipped them back their product then they shipped me a new one. Personally I think it is BS that I had to pay $1 more to get a new Seneye when the one I received in the first place was defective. Since I had no recourse I was stuck.

I received the new Seneye a few days ago and I’ll set up soon. I don’t have a lot of faith it’s going to work as indicated for either the pH or Ammonia as the last one didnt and I confirmed it didn’t using Hanna and Red Sea tests to check against the Seneye.

The par meter seemed functional however I can only count on its accuracy based on what bulk reef supply did with testing on it.
 
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brandon429

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Excellent update, thank you for inputs and follow up dochow


what I like most about this thread is how solid biology is the meter that $200 devices are benchmarked against


remember all reefing years from beginning until just a few years ago took the ranging reports of api and attributed the readings to variation in ammonia control tank to tank. The kit wasn’t doubted, the bacteria were

allowing for constant variance in surface area mechanics across reefs, to justify the test reading or interpretation, we allowed cycles to sometimes take ninety days or more going off old rules where test kits simply were not doubted. Some tanks simply couldn’t process the last .5 ppm of hourly bioload...we attributed the weakness to bacteria

now in 2021 it’s opposite

we already know 100% of every display reef tank well after cycle is using rocks and or sand, massive surface area redundancy, and that will streamline ammonia control for all tanks, to the point seneye is what’s wrong when readings disagree and never the bacteria. Reversal.

*working seneye reporting in the thousandths ppm whether on nano reefs or giant setups is where we get a glint insight on the scalability of ammonia conversion rates in reefing

smaller reefs with less water to dilute bioload do not run higher ammonia constants than 500 gallon reefs, rushing water over high surface area produces the same conversion averages for a one gallon reef or a thousand gallon reef, new dawn of surface area mechanics in reefing. It’s not all about the bacteria.
 
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Dan_P

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Going back to a few weeks ago when I’m posted about my Ammonia reading being stuck at the highest possible level and everything in tank healthy.

I was asked to send pics to Seneye customer service if the device and the slide. They said the device was not reading the slide correctly and that they would send me a new device.

I was then asked to mail my defective device to a distributor in Canada (I’m in RI, USA) and had to pay $25 for this which they would not reimburse or send me an extra set of slides or anything.

After I let them know I shipped them back their product then they shipped me a new one. Personally I think it is crap that I had to pay $1 more to get a new Seneye when the one I received in the first place was defective. Since I had no recourse I was stuck.

I received the new Seneye a few days ago and I’ll set up soon. I don’t have a lot of faith it’s going to work as indicated for either the pH or Ammonia as the last one didnt and I confirmed it didn’t using Hanna and Red Sea tests to check against the Seneye.

The par meter seemed functional however I can only count on its accuracy based on what bulk reef supply did with testing on it.
Good luck on the new device. I wonder whether Seneye is a struggling start up that can’t afford free return shipping OR are they just trying to discourage replacements unless you really, really mean it.
 
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brandon429

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Dan I’m now not sure their reading is accurate tank to tank even when reporting in thousandths, that concern had been mentioned prior and I can see it now by the patterns reported


so many have the device now and it reads .001 and they thought that was ok/ accurate since it was low/thousandths ppm and tank looked healthy (non changing ammonia nh3 with daily events? Clue for misread even though that’s in thousandths)


where I think the utility still exists is how the working units / ones that change rates with daily events like heavy feeding or an occasional fish loss is that they at least show thousandths, not hundredths in pattern, and they report same rates regardless of tank size—pico to massive tanks which is in line with what we expect high flow over active surface area to produce.


they're on the cusp of accurate nh3 measure, still not quite there.

check out this cool article from noaa

that fancy hach setup maybe what we need to benchmark a seneye claimed to be working (how much has our hobby impacted formal marine biology I ask u)-

ive never seen anything formal mentioning hobby kit ammonia misreads.
 
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brandon429

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Let the record reflect its 2021, we still don’t know exactly what ammonia does in a common fish tank. We can see the big picture perspective now for sure, nobody’s tank fails to control ammonia after cycle time

but the nuances, the small details like exact rates and when / if they can change in some tanks, not known.
 
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