Calibration

geosReef

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Just recalibrated my Trident with the calibration solution.
DKH 8.83
Cal 428
Mag 1146

but my Hanna is giving me
DKH 9.8
Cal 398
Salifert
Mag 1140

can I just the trident calibrated with my own water on apex fusion? Put the Hanna and Salifert numbers in?
 

blaxsun

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Yes - most of us do it this way (as the Neptune calibration solution is notoriously inaccurate). Just click on the module icon, then check the "Perform Calibration" box and enter the numbers manually.

Screen Shot 2022-11-11 at 2.08.49 PM.png
 
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geosReef

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Thanks! Just recalibrate it that way. How often do you have to recalibrate in that way?
 

Gophish1982

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Thanks! Just recalibrate it that way. How often do you have to recalibrate in that way?
Did the calibration actually hold? When I try to do it this way, the next time the trident tests, it gives a Alk result 1.5 lower than the calibrated values.
 
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geosReef

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Did the calibration actually hold? When I try to do it this way, the next time the trident tests, it gives a Alk result 1.5 lower than the calibrated values.
My trident and Hanna are pretty close by .1 difference. Sometimes there’s no difference at all when I check through out the week
 

Lion6

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What worked for us:

We were getting a 1.5 dKH lower value on trident than our Hanna alkalinity tester.

The trident was so low that it did not seem believable.

We could not get the Trident to calibrate so it would agree with the Hanna alkalinity tester. When we attempted to calibrate the trident upwards 1.5 dKH using tank water, it seemed to work until the next scheduled test. At the next regularly scheduled test the trident would revert to the values it reported before we had calibrated it.

I SUSPECTED that Trident is programmed to prevented making a large calibration.

I SUSPECTED that if you calibrate more than 1.0 DKH it assumes error and reverts to the last calibration performed with Neptune calibration fluid.

I tried to think of a workaround.

I decided to try to perform a tank water calibration in many different steps. Each time, I only calibrated a portion of the total desired calibration.

It worked and held the values UNTIL I had changed it a total of about 1.0 dKH. After the total of all my calibrations exceeded this 1.0 dKH level, it seemed to throw out all the calibrations and go back to the values it was reporting before I tried to do anything. Back to square one.

Next, I suspected that maybe something else was the cause. The trident comes with a part they call “optional trident sample line filter”. This is a tiny filter about the size of a dime that goes on the end of the sample uptake line that is in your sump. They tell you to use it if you have turbid water and want to keep debris out of the sample line. From the very beginning, we used it because we felt it was good to keep debris out of the trident. I decided that maybe this filter was altering the test results of the trident. I thought maybe the trident had been factory calibrated without this filter attached and maybe adding it could have affected the Trident results. We had never calibrated using anything except tank water before.

I decided that we should calibrate trident using Neptune fluid and WITH THE FILTER IN PLACE.

We performed the calibration with the Neptune fluid and filter attached. Afterwards, the trident was reading only 0.5 dKH less than the Hanna tester. Much closer.

We then performed a ATI-ICP-OES test and the result from ATI matched up very closely with the trident and also was 0.5 DKH lower than Hanna.

Here is my conclusion:

If you are running the “optional trident sample line filter”, try performing a calibration using Neptune fluid with the optional sample line filter in place.

I believe you’ll end up having trident values about 0.5 dKH less than your Hanna alkalinity tester.

I felt that 0.5 difference between Trident and Hanna was a reasonable amount. Since ATI agreed more closely with the trident after calibrating with the filter attached, I now trust the trident and believe the Hanna to be 0.5 dKH high. Regular testing with the Hanna remains consistently 0.5 higher than the trident.

I sincerely hope this can help some of you struggling with large differences between Trident and Hanna for alkalinity. It worked for us.
 

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Randy Holmes-Farley

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Just recalibrated my Trident with the calibration solution.
DKH 8.83
Cal 428
Mag 1146

but my Hanna is giving me
DKH 9.8
Cal 398
Salifert
Mag 1140

can I just the trident calibrated with my own water on apex fusion? Put the Hanna and Salifert numbers in?

I don't know what specification the Trident is manufactured to (they misleadingly, IMO, only quote precision, not accuracy, see below), but the Hanna only claims +/- 5%. Thus, even by their own claims, your 9.98 dKH could be 9.48 to 10.48 dKH on the Hanna.

Consequently, both devices may be reading within their specifications and still deviate significantly from one another.


CONSISTENCY AND PRECISION, TEST AFTER TEST​

The Trident tests with a precision of +/- 0.05 dKh for Alkalinity and 15ppm for Calcium and Magnesium. This is better than humans can do consistently with every hobby-grade test kit on the market.


Accuracy @ 25°C/77°F±0.3 dKH ±5% of reading
 

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