A thread tracking the incidence of seneye nh3 misreads

Rain 625XXL

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Hi guys, I have a new Seneye installed in my new tank and I have found that the PH reading to be lower than what it actually is most of the times.

When the tank was first setup, the salinity was just spot on and I didn't even bother to look at the PH. I was checking Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate. During the initial fishless cycle, I did all manual testing and my LFS sold me the seneye just before I was about to add the fish. I had set everything up as per instructions but my PH reading was around 7.2 to 7.3.
Took a water sample to the LFS and also did a manual test with my test kit and they all produced a result closer to 8. As I am writing this post, my PH according the seneye is 7.51 but I know it is much higher than that since I have been checking this everyday since adding the fish. I have tried to trim this on the computer, but the trim will only last for a few minutes and then it reverts back to the reading from the slide.

Unfortunately, I have not had this during the initial cycle so I can't comment on the Ammonia reading, but it has always been 0.001 since it was put in the tank. I feed the fish once a day and only have 7 fish in there at the moment. Hope this information will become useful to someone someday. Cheers
 
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brandon429

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Their ammonia tester supposedly very $

if we could get it’s reading off a typical reef tank that’d be a start, just a decent working baseline for what a normal reef runs nh3

the article seems to mention it in context of a benchmark

it would then be amazing to run a dry rock cycle with one, to validate cycling chart dates etc vs holding/taking longer than ten days to control nh3 after adding bacteria and water.
 

ingchr1

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Hi guys, I have a new Seneye installed in my new tank and I have found that the PH reading to be lower than what it actually is most of the times.

When the tank was first setup, the salinity was just spot on and I didn't even bother to look at the PH. I was checking Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate. During the initial fishless cycle, I did all manual testing and my LFS sold me the seneye just before I was about to add the fish. I had set everything up as per instructions but my PH reading was around 7.2 to 7.3.
Took a water sample to the LFS and also did a manual test with my test kit and they all produced a result closer to 8. As I am writing this post, my PH according the seneye is 7.51 but I know it is much higher than that since I have been checking this everyday since adding the fish. I have tried to trim this on the computer, but the trim will only last for a few minutes and then it reverts back to the reading from the slide.

Unfortunately, I have not had this during the initial cycle so I can't comment on the Ammonia reading, but it has always been 0.001 since it was put in the tank. I feed the fish once a day and only have 7 fish in there at the moment. Hope this information will become useful to someone someday. Cheers
Once you adjust the trim and select Ok is should stay and be reflected on subsequent readings. If it's not then I would contact Seneye to see what they say. I found the temperature trim to be finicky. I had to make a few adjustments back and forth until it read the value I wanted. Which was to closely match the reading on my GHL controller.

1610286518647.png


Once trimmed my pH has been consistent with my GHL controller, through two different slides. However, it does drift up when the slide is a few days out from expiration. I have observed this on multiple slides. The slides I am currently using are from 2018, so not sure if that is a factor. Have one more slide to go through before I start using newer ones just bought.

You can see the trend on this slide which expires in three days.

1610286716978.png
 

ingchr1

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...Unfortunately, I have not had this during the initial cycle so I can't comment on the Ammonia reading, but it has always been 0.001 since it was put in the tank. I feed the fish once a day and only have 7 fish in there at the moment. Hope this information will become useful to someone someday. Cheers
On the slide prior to the one I'm currently using it read 0.005. The only time I saw movement in the ammonia reading was when I dosed NH4Cl. I have 40 gallon AIO, four fish and feed once a day.

The slide I currently have in was reading 0.001 and was not registering the NH4Cl doses. Based on my last slide I deemed 0.005 to be "normal" for my tank and trimmed the reading to be such (see screenshot in above post). Since doing that the NH4Cl doses have been registering on the device, although not all of them. I'd say maybe 50%. My last slide was much better.

Will see how the next slide behaves in a few days. However, it is a 2018 slide.

Hard to see, but the little blips are the NH4Cl doses.

1610288571981.png
 

ingchr1

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...The slide I currently have in was reading 0.001 and was not registering the NH4Cl doses. Based on my last slide I deemed 0.005 to be "normal" for my tank and trimmed the reading to be such (see screenshot in above post). Since doing that the NH4Cl doses have been registering on the device, although not all of them. I'd say maybe 50%. My last slide was much better.

Will see how the next slide behaves in a few days. However, it is a 2018 slide....
Just wanted to add that the slide not registering every dose could be tank and dose amount related. Not necessarily an issue with the slide.

I have been dosing the NH4Cl for two months. Maybe my tank is processing it faster then it was when I first started?

When I first started the dosing the Seneye would show the NH4Cl spike to last for ~1 hour. The Seneye automatically records a reading every 30 minutes. So this would equate to 2 or 3 three readings.

If the tank is processing within one reading, then maybe it's getting missed. This could occur if I happen to dose shortly after it had just recorded its last reading.

As a test I dosed my normal four drops of Dr. Tims NH4Cl (I'm currently dosing four drops in the AM and four in the PM). Following the dose I initiated a few manual readings.

The results do show that the Ammonia is dissipating within a half hour. It's actually within about 15 minutes. This would account for what I am seeing in the "missed" readings.

Will see if the next slide exhibits the same behavior.

1610297505421.png
 

Dan_P

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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.
Great article Brandon!

I see the good doctor @Randy Holmes-Farley is referenced quite a bit.

The reference to ammonia toxicity is informative. It seems we have some leeway, maybe even in dosing ammonium chloride.

The Seneye ammonia detection is a cool idea. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing whether it works. I need to bug @Rick Mathew on doing one of his in depth investigations on the darn thing. At this time we do not know the accuracy, precision nor response time of the device. Why does anyone trust it?
 

ingchr1

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Another data point. Changed out the slide the other day. As with my previous slides, this slide is also two years old.

This slide is reading "normal" NH4 as 0.005-0.007, similar to the last slide which was reading 0.005. The trim of +0.004 is sill applied. I may remove that to see if the response is affected (e.g. it goes back to reading 0.001, even when the NH4Cl is dosed).

While the last slide showed the ammonia from my NH4Cl dosing to be processed in one sample reading, this slide is back to what the previous slides were showing. ~Three sample readings for the ammonia to be processed.

Also as exhibited in all other slides, the pH went back to close alignment with my controllers pH reading. The last week of a slides life the pH drifts up.

You can see where I changed the slide and it started registering the ammonia adds for a longer period of time.

1610892591002.png


This graph demonstrates the drift in pH the last week in a slides life. The drop down is where I changed the slide.

1610892730584.png
 

Rain 625XXL

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Once you adjust the trim and select Ok is should stay and be reflected on subsequent readings. If it's not then I would contact Seneye to see what they say. I found the temperature trim to be finicky. I had to make a few adjustments back and forth until it read the value I wanted. Which was to closely match the reading on my GHL controller.

1610286518647.png


Once trimmed my pH has been consistent with my GHL controller, through two different slides. However, it does drift up when the slide is a few days out from expiration. I have observed this on multiple slides. The slides I am currently using are from 2018, so not sure if that is a factor. Have one more slide to go through before I start using newer ones just bought.

You can see the trend on this slide which expires in three days.

1610286716978.png
Thank you. I have finally got this sorted out. Issue was, my seneye web server was not connecting properly to my seneye account. I have trimmed to PH up to 8(hanna checker was reading 8.0) and it has been reading between 7.95 and 8 since then. This is mostlikely accurate as water test results ingot from LFS was also reading 7.9ph.

Turned the skimmer ok for the first time yesterday and within a few hours I could see seneye reading a ph closer to 8.2. I am glad that this is now sorted. Thanks for the help.
 
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brandon429

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What’s your nh3 read so curious
 

Rain 625XXL

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What’s your nh3 read so curious
0.001

This has been like this even since I put the seneye in. My tank was already cycled by the time I got around to install the seneye. Never soon it change ever. I haven't seen any ammonia reading with other teat kits either. I was also a bit sus about this reading, but I have not been able to see any ammonia in the tank on any of the other tests that we carried out either. My latest test results from my Lfs are attached below.
Screenshot_20210123-054712_Outlook.jpg
 
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brandon429

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that is an unacceptable nh3 reading, thank you for posting. Even if that's not the major aim for the component, they're responsible for tuning that portion up for sure in my opinion. we want to log all known misreads here, and absolutely no reef tank in the world runs .001 consistently, the measure is by rule varying but within tight specs for that variance, thousandths is what the best science we have says. so far
 
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ingchr1

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My last two slides needed to have NH3 trim to get off of a 0.001 reading. I had the trim set at +0.004 to get a 0.005 reading, what I deemed a "normal" reading for my tank based off past slides.

The new slide I put in last night is off of the 0.001 reading and appears to be reading 0.007 or so as "normal". So I have set the trim back to 0.000.

Not sure what could be different with this slide from the other two, all three came out of the same box. They are 2018 slides. My next batch of slides were purchased last fall. Will see how those go.

When I put this slide in I wiped down the sensor windows, again not sure if that made the difference or not.

7:16AM - Slide expired
6:14PM - New slide installed. Note at this point the +0.004 trim was still applied, I did not remove that till this morning.
7:56PM - Did one of my two daily doses of Dr. Tims NH4Cl. Four drops or so.

As a side note, I only soaked this slide for 24hrs prior to use.

1613233298470.png


For pH, slide behavior has been consistent through slide changes. The last week or so of a slides life the pH value drifts up. Install new slide and it's back to reading close to what my controller reads. I set the trim for pH several slides ago and have not had to touch it.

1613233790194.png
 
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brandon429

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Thank you x10 for this we need it here so new owners learn about trim settings in this one place. I'm in private message with one device that won't move from .001 and one device that is stuck in hundredths daily even with a tank full of reef life. Ugg.
I don't own a seneye/ unable to assist.

Prediction: this hobby requires until 2035 in order to know the exact nh3 status of any hundred tanks sampled. Decades. The wild west of reef tank cycling, timing, dynamics, reliability is going to last a long long time. Nice coincidence: complete doubt in what bacteria do driven by mistesting is selling a million bucks of bottle bac a year. Why rush it, they're thinking.
 
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ingchr1

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Trim could be the initial recommendation for a slide that is "stuck" on 0.001.

If you have past readings, trim to that value. In my case that reading is 0.005 or so. Will see how that number tracks over time. The current slide is at 0.007, with 0.000 trim.

No past readings, trim to somewhere between 0.005 - 0.010?

Then see how the slide responds.

Note that the only time I really see any movement in the reading is when I dose the NH4Cl.

For pH and temperature you need to trim based off another calibrated reading. In my case I have a controller that I trimmed the readings to.

For my Seneye, temperature is trimmed to +0.51 and pH -0.18.

Realizing that for my controller while I calibrate my pH probe, my temperature probe isn't really what I would call calibrated. But I trust it's accurate and it closely matches a hand held digital thermometer that I have.
 

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MY ammonia on the seneye always reads zero no matter where the trim is at but a couple times a day itll shoot up and send me an ammonia alert.. Slide has been in for about a week and the Seneye is brand new.
 

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brandon429

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100% helpful thank you for posting, zip em an email let us know if they get it fixed as in always within .002-.009 nh3
 

Danno23

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100% helpful thank you for posting, zip em an email let us know if they get it fixed as in always within .002-.009 nh3
I shot them an email, Ill let you know the reply here. What should the normal established reef ammonia amount be with the trim set ?
 
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brandon429

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The lions share of running seneyes where everything seems tuned and running report free ammonia nh3 in the range above we don’t track or care much about the nh4 total ammonia portion

there is a mathematical equation though where you can know what your nh4 has to be off an nh3 reading, that might be helpful in calibrating both forms of measure if indeed a seneye is reporting total ammonia and not just nh3 free ammonia
 

Sharkattackmack

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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.
Mine is always at .001.
 

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