Ammonia slowly climbing?

[brandon429]

This is a one shot chance to get seneye feedback im just itching to know if they can report any reef tanks with rock and sand, post cycle, that didn’t run in the thousandths ppm turnover rate

his answer above seems to confirm normal as day, you have some ammonia, based on -your- tanks measure

That outlier report doesn’t shock them? Did they factor no known constant input, no dead animals unaccounted for?

i can’t envision an ammonia tracing answer from seneye without them asking those discovery questions

but what if they consult known function logs, how many outliers run in the hundredths ppm sustained, and never go over


how does one tune a biosystem to run short of a 1000+ report data plot, but not climb to doom, in this much surface area? Pls ask him 4 me it’s critical feedback for today’s cycling science, we are trusting seneye to be a fair ref. If seneye backs the meter, they need to be able to state the biomechanism at work, not just state ‘yes this reef among ten thousand has free ammonia’

 

[brandon429]

Email them this link~ To your thread

Seabass from nano-reef.com Im smiling at you because this thread would make you smile, you know I cannot personally deal with ammonia noncompliance from a kit I’ve embraced it is a pea under my reef mattress i get no rest unresolved

Ill trust biology over hardware anyday but an answer from seneye that the measure is accepted as accurate just has to be found elsewhere too. Yours is the first I’ve seen

@Jon Malkerson can you find any reason this aquarium would be ammonia noncompliant on seneye

 

[Cell]

We need answers. Brandon's sanity is at a stake here!

 

[PRock]

Email them this link~ To your thread

Seabass from nano-reef.com Im smiling at you because this thread would make you smile, you know I cannot personally deal with ammonia noncompliance from a kit I’ve embraced it is a pea under my reef mattress i get no rest unresolved

Ill trust biology over hardware anyday but an answer from seneye that the measure is accepted as accurate just has to be found elsewhere too. Yours is the first I’ve seen

@Jon Malkerson can you find any reason this aquarium would be ammonia noncompliant on seneye

Seems they only respond to emails during business hours, but I'll be following up with them on this for sure. And I totally agree that this seems biologically impossible. I did a water change, didn't seem to make a dent. Readings as of now:

• Temp 77.9
• PH 8.08
• NH3 0.086ppm
• NH4 15.34ppb

 

[Crustaceon]

So you started doing daily water changes because of a seneye reading and stuff started dying. I’m wondering if the seneye is providing a false reading (sensors go out of calibration and fail) and the livestock loss is due to shock to the frequent water changes. Just a thought. I’d get a second test for that ammonia before doing anything else. It just seems really odd that an established tank with so much live rock, so little livestock and bacteria dosing is having an ammonia issue.

 

[PRock]

So you started doing daily water changes because of a seneye reading and stuff started dying. I’m wondering if the seneye is providing a false reading (sensors go out of calibration and fail) and the livestock loss is due to shock to the frequent water changes. Just a thought. I’d get a second test for that ammonia before doing anything else. It just seems really odd that an established tank with so much live rock, so little livestock and bacteria dosing is having an ammonia issue.

So we're pretty sure the Seneye is insane at this point, I'm just going through troubleshooting with the company to get them to confirm that it's insane. I've also been dosing AmmoLock, and that also appears to increase the Ammona test readings. I'm tempted to run down to my LFS and grab an NDOC test and send that in. I'd be curious to see those results.

 

[Crustaceon]

So we're pretty sure the Seneye is insane at this point, I'm just going through troubleshooting with the company to get them to confirm that it's insane. I've also been dosing AmmoLock, and that also appears to increase the Ammona test readings. I'm tempted to run down to my LFS and grab an NDOC test and send that in. I'd be curious to see those results.

I definitely would. If it were me, it would drive me nuts until I used a different test to confirm.

 

[PRock]

I definitely would. If it were me, it would drive me nuts until I used a different test to confirm.

If you check out some of the thread, I've posted results of my Red Sea tests, which confirm that something in the tank is reading as Ammonia, but based on one of the experiments I did, I think what the Red Sea test is reading is the AmmoLock I was dosing because I was believing the Seneye.

 

[Crustaceon]

If you check out some of the thread, I've posted results of my Red Sea tests, which confirm that something in the tank is reading as Ammonia, but based on one of the experiments I did, I think what the Red Sea test is reading is the AmmoLock I was dosing because I was believing the Seneye.

That makes sense. I believe even seachem notes false positives in ammonia tests when using prime.

“Under the conditions of a salicylate kit the ammonia-Prime complex will be broken down eventually giving a false reading of ammonia (same as with other products like Prime®), so the key with a salicylate kit is to take the reading right away. However, the best solution ;-) is to use our MultiTest: Ammonia™ kit... it uses a gas exchange sensor system which is not affected by the presence of Prime® or other similar products. It also has the added advantage that it can detect the more dangerous free ammonia and distinguish it from total ammonia (which is both the free and ionized forms of ammonia (the ionized form is not toxic))."

 

[PRock]

Seneye has confirmed that the device is broken.

Hi Paul,

Thank you for sending this information over, unfortunately the white constantly being on means the device has suffered an internal failure.

We have had a look at the history of the device today and it is no longer under warranty therefore, we are afraid we cannot replace it for free.

However, because it is only a few months out of warranty we would like to offer you the following options;

• send the device back to us, our tech team can have a look at it and try to repair it FOC, however, this cannot be guaranteed
• we can offer you a heavily supported price replacement and we will send a slide FOC with the device for the lost days monitoring.

We apologise for the inconvenience, please let us know how you would like to proceed.

Kind regards,

Seneye Support Team

 

[brandon429]

Your updates have been really, really helpful. thank you for helping us get to the bottom of this pretty amazing situation...the fail rates are indeed low among users for sure, not like its a bad device like a yugo/ but this one somehow did get off kilter somehow.

your thread has tremendous use for biological comparisons in the future for sure for cycling threads, reef tank conversion rates, its an important thread you have. Ill be linking to it for sure. uncontrolled ammonia always causes visual cues we can see in the system, its a very consequential param to not have in full control. thankfully the nature of high surface area stuff we use, + hydration, always keeps ammonia in line barring any kind of death event or medication event


a reef tank can never look and run normal day to day, and have ammonia that runs out of the thousands ppm/that measure has to be accepted until another calibration proves the working seneyes wrong.

test errors are shaping cycle biology rules thats for sure. statistical outliers dont occur regarding ammonia control post cycle, that's a big deal (all statements factor no obvious fish death, no curing rocks just unboxed, we analyze what typical reefs do with ammonia day to day)

between half a million api measures and a few thousand seneye measures, we now have some very new and very updated cycling science to share.

 

[PRock]

I'm going to see what their replacement offer is, it might just be worth it if the price is right. I've been holding onto the Seneye and not "upgrading" to another sensor platform because I've been holding out for their mythical "Coral" device, but now that I've got a failed device I'm having to re-think that decision. I've asked their support team about the Coral as well, but I'm not expecting that they'll be able to tell me anything. I might just take this opportunity to switch to another platform that lets me track params that are more important to coral health (Looking at the GHL KH Director and ION Director), we'll see.

 

[Cell]

And Brandon can finally get a good night's rest! :p

 

[brandon429]

I was thinking this week: ill never be able to go edit in all the claims. its like fifteen years of written logs, doomed.

 

[Cell]

Would have been a forum rip clean.

 

[PRock]

I was thinking this week: ill never be able to go edit in all the claims. its like fifteen years of written logs, doomed.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof :-) Luckily for us, "I have sky high ammonia and all the fish are fine" has been shown to actually be "I have FALSE sky high ammonia readings" instead. Science prevails!

 

[Dan_P]

I'm going to see what their replacement offer is, it might just be worth it if the price is right. I've been holding onto the Seneye and not "upgrading" to another sensor platform because I've been holding out for their mythical "Coral" device, but now that I've got a failed device I'm having to re-think that decision. I've asked their support team about the Coral as well, but I'm not expecting that they'll be able to tell me anything. I might just take this opportunity to switch to another platform that lets me track params that are more important to coral health (Looking at the GHL KH Director and ION Director), we'll see.

Have a chat with @Rick Mathew on the subject of failed Seneye and compare notes on warranty service.

 

[PRock]

Seneye offered me a replacement unit for $60, plus about $35 in shipping costs (have to send it across the Atlantic...), so basically half price. Not too bad IMHO for an out of warranty replacement, considering that I've see many companies just go "Oh, your warranty expired yesterday... too bad, so sad! We'll answer your question for a fee, or you can buy a new unit."

 

[brandon429]

I can't see a need to ever monitor ammonia in a reef. even if you have a fish die wedged in, its not going to spike that tank as a cascade thats a bunch of water rocks n sand.

a system that remotely alerts you while on vaca of a multi death situation might be helpful but day to day ammonia measures/not req'd. highly entertaining to watch though.

 

[PRock]

I can't see a need to ever monitor ammonia in a reef. even if you have a fish die wedged in, its not going to spike that tank as a cascade thats a bunch of water rocks n sand.

a system that remotely alerts you while on vaca of a multi death situation might be helpful but day to day ammonia measures/not req'd. highly entertaining to watch though.

Yeah, I originally got it to monitor PH and to use as a PAR meter, so the ammonia isn't really something I worried about until the sensor went insane. But I'd rather have a good sensor than a known crazy one in the tank when it's all said and done.