Is Trident NP actually working for anyone?

[moosevandyke]

Both mine work well. I let them just run for a week and the results were all over the place didn’t fuss with anything. Then i calibrated after that week period and both are very similar to the Hanna. You do have to be diligent it is for sure not a set and forget toy. But has been extremely useful for setting up new tank for daily phosphate readings. Let’s me know if I need to dose or not.

 

[RelaxingWithTheReef]

Hmm, well, I am surprised. I flushed the sample line with some alcohol, rinsed it with RO, and primed the line. I ran another test, and the reading was exactly the same as my Hanna again.

Before the cleaning it read 0.04
After cleaning it read 0.16
Hanna read 0.15

At this point, I have to think it is the sample line, and if it is biofilm, it grows fast, at least in my tank.

Cleaning the line every two days is a lot more work than using a Hanna tester. I don't know what the fix would be for this.

This is similar to my results, grows fast. Also watching @reef_ranch results. All very interesting, and thank you for your contribution to the effort.

Incredibly, I found that even the internal short length of black tubing from the barb connector right outside of the tester to the sample water pinch valve had the capability of slightly reducing phosphate.

I performed a couple software updates since the summer when I first purchased the units. We still cannot rule out software, but I saw no evidence that a software calibration routine, or some type of digital filtering, or software / hardware malfunction was causing the erroneous results.

For me, every case of a reduced phosphate reading was simply the result of the test sample not turning dark properly in the cuvette during the phosphate test. The testers themselves were working properly.

Remember that I was independently able to observe phosphate reduction in the tubing itself by slowly drawing sample water, and testing it. 1 mL every 5 minutes for a total of 10 mL right after the completion of a test cycle that had a low phosphate result.

If this theory is proven true, I am amazed as to how fast the biofilm seemingly develops, and how efficient it is at phosphate removal. It’s still interesting that only some tanks appear to be susceptible to this issue.

 

[bkwonnn]

Wow Neptune customer service really is bad. I have complied with them, helping them out multiple times in making pictures of bad reagents etc. Put in hours of work. And their final reply is. The reagents color seem fine.
Paid 120 usd for 2 boxes of uslesss chemicals.
I’m really upset about this. If I knew this is how they would treat customers
Like this I would have never bought their stuff. Next to this my LLS also came broken straight out of the box.

 

[Comic_Reef]

%This is similar to my results, grows fast. Also watching @reef_ranch results. All very interesting, and thank you for your contribution to the effort.

Incredibly, I found that even the internal short length of black tubing from the barb connector right outside of the tester to the sample water pinch valve had the capability of slightly reducing phosphate.

I performed a couple software updates since the summer when I first purchased the units. We still cannot rule out software, but I saw no evidence that a software calibration routine, or some type of digital filtering, or software / hardware malfunction was causing the erroneous results.

For me, every case of a reduced phosphate reading was simply the result of the test sample not turning dark properly in the cuvette during the phosphate test. The testers themselves were working properly.

Remember that I was independently able to observe phosphate reduction in the tubing itself by slowly drawing sample water, and testing it. 1 mL every 5 minutes for a total of 10 mL right after the completion of a test cycle that had a low phosphate result.

If this theory is proven true, I am amazed as to how fast the biofilm seemingly develops, and how efficient it is at phosphate removal. It’s still interesting that only some tanks appear to be susceptible to this issue.

Baseless Theory Incoming: Could this issue be why CoralVue added the flushing feature to the Maven. To me at first glance that feature didn't make too much sense and seemed like overkill. Call me a pessimist, but 99% of companies, don't really do overkill, so long as you have a positive experience. BUT if you throw in the idea that phosphate absorbing bacteria can live inside of these sample lines, flushing these lines begins to make more sense, ensuring that the bacteria has nowhere to actively live between tests.

Neptune I think may be aware of this as the issue. Check the NP Cleaning Tasks in Fusion. It works to run bleach through your lines which would obviously kill off all of these bacteria. BUT if we're talking about bacteria, there's no reason why they wouldn't just entirely repopulate in a matter of days. The only solution really would be doing away with a primed sample line/flushing the system between tests.

 

[RelaxingWithTheReef]

Update - I just discovered another issue with my Trident NP. My reagents are at the “sell by date”, and have apparently degraded prematurely. This resulted in crazy readings of both Nitrate and Phosphate.

With my “fresh sample water right at the pinch valve modification” to eliminate sample line bacteria growth and phosphate drift, the 3 units I run have been performing flawlessly since last summer. So much so, I stopped verifying the results. But recently the nitrate readings increased, causing me to add additional carbon. Corals were not looking good with a couple RTN, and a Hanna HR nitrate test revealed 0 nitrate while the NP was reporting 23 ppm. I also discovered phosphate was reading low.

I had an unopened box of reagents with the same date code and expiration, and they also showed the same visual degradation and test result errors.

These are pictures of the degraded reagents on the left, and corresponding new reagents on the right. The new reagents have a Sell By Date 4 months from now.

While all three reagents show some color change the most obvious indicator of bad reagent is Reagent 1. This reagent is used during Nitrate testing. Clear is good, and the degraded reagent has a darker color with a dark precipitate collecting on the bottom.

Reagent 2

Reagent 3

With new reagents, everything is back to reading correctly.

If you choose to run the Trident NP the best advice I can suggest is don’t stock up on reagents. Make sure you are always using reagents that are as fresh as possible.