Since the beginning of April 2019 I've had my Trident and after a couple weeks when I trusted it, I started experimenting with some programming I thought of well before its release. More people with reactors need to know about this easy to create and use program to help with Alkalinity stability so I'm sharing it on R2R in hopes more reefers see it. A sticky thread would be best.
For 15 years prior to the Neptune Trident, my Alkalinity was always on a slow climb, or slow drop due to my laziness. I learned that as long as changes happened slowly my corals don't really care. Because of that, I never worried about dialing my reactor in perfectly and I would often go several months without testing for Alkalinity. I've had Alkalinity as low as 6 and as high as 16. Those two extremes are when my corals showed visible signs of stress and of course I had to jump to action to correct the problem. A 10% WC and slight correction of the reactor is all that was ever needed. The problem happened slowly so correcting it slowly is always best with SPS. Every number in between is pretty safe in my experience. Of course 7-11 is the target. I have not tested for Calcium in over a decade, and rarely test for Magnesium. In my opinion, with a Calcium reactor, those two numbers are not real important, because with a quality media, they will always be balanced.
Enough back story, on to the good stuff.
This program should work with any CO2 regulator with an electronic selenoid. Its very simple and consists of two virtual outlets. One is the high limit of your choice, and the second is the toggle that slows the melt (raises the pH in the reactor) to slowly lower the Alkalinity in the tank.
This is the high limit Virtual Outlet. I chose 9.03 as a random number for the initial experiment and never changed it. The Target Alkalinity is 9.00.
This is my OSC Virtual Outlet. For every twenty minute cycle, the CO2 is turned off which raises the reactor pH up about two tenths
For the reactor CO2, I left my old original programming as a fail safe and simply added the last line. At this point I could remove the second line, but leaving it will make things easier for when I have to take the Trident off line for maintenance.
Thats it! The program requires you to dial in the reactor to work slightly harder than you need it to and as demands increase the toggle will come on less often as a high limit. This has been successfully working for quite a few large SPS tanks including @melev and @Thales as well as my own. I hope it helps you too.
For 15 years prior to the Neptune Trident, my Alkalinity was always on a slow climb, or slow drop due to my laziness. I learned that as long as changes happened slowly my corals don't really care. Because of that, I never worried about dialing my reactor in perfectly and I would often go several months without testing for Alkalinity. I've had Alkalinity as low as 6 and as high as 16. Those two extremes are when my corals showed visible signs of stress and of course I had to jump to action to correct the problem. A 10% WC and slight correction of the reactor is all that was ever needed. The problem happened slowly so correcting it slowly is always best with SPS. Every number in between is pretty safe in my experience. Of course 7-11 is the target. I have not tested for Calcium in over a decade, and rarely test for Magnesium. In my opinion, with a Calcium reactor, those two numbers are not real important, because with a quality media, they will always be balanced.
Enough back story, on to the good stuff.
This program should work with any CO2 regulator with an electronic selenoid. Its very simple and consists of two virtual outlets. One is the high limit of your choice, and the second is the toggle that slows the melt (raises the pH in the reactor) to slowly lower the Alkalinity in the tank.
This is the high limit Virtual Outlet. I chose 9.03 as a random number for the initial experiment and never changed it. The Target Alkalinity is 9.00.
This is my OSC Virtual Outlet. For every twenty minute cycle, the CO2 is turned off which raises the reactor pH up about two tenths
For the reactor CO2, I left my old original programming as a fail safe and simply added the last line. At this point I could remove the second line, but leaving it will make things easier for when I have to take the Trident off line for maintenance.
Thats it! The program requires you to dial in the reactor to work slightly harder than you need it to and as demands increase the toggle will come on less often as a high limit. This has been successfully working for quite a few large SPS tanks including @melev and @Thales as well as my own. I hope it helps you too.