Looking into getting a Trident. How's your experience been?

[Reefs and Geeks]

I just got my apex during the Neptune Orange and Grey days and have inevitably started to get more and more excited about it. Long story short, I'm trying to cut back on time I NEED to spend on my tank due to an ever busier work and personal life. I manually test my alkalinity almost every day to make sure nothing gets out of wack and can be corrected right away if it does. I feel like right now that is the main task I do for my tank that is most important for me to do frequently to maintain the best reef, but I am frequently doing that late at night after the kids and wife go to bed, as well as other chores.

I'm looking to add a trident to help reduce the work needed for my tank, but want to know what those who have one think about it.
Does it need alot of tinkering to keep working correctly?
Did it really reduce your need to perform manual testing?
Did it help you improve your tank, or just save you some time doing testing?
What issues have you had with yours? ( I frequently read about some supply shortages with reagent)
Anything else someone should know before purchasing one?

Thanks!

 

[DWPhilli]

Mine has worked fine with no issues, and it has been very helpful as my frags have been growing into mini colonies, it really helps me know when to increase dosing.

The reagents can be tricky to get so you need to be looking at least a month ahead. I was able to get a six month supply a few weeks ago (first time it has been available since I have been using it)

 

[Deezill]

I love my trident. I did have to send my entire unit back so that they could fix it because 5 months after I got it, it stopped pulling in water and gave me a no water sample error. They fixed it and sent it back. The entire turn around was 3 weeks. Having to test with my hanna checker made me feel like i was using old technology lol. I like the fact that I can look and see my dkh and Cal and Mag whenever. I lost that feeling while it was gone. Over all I love it.

 

[Bepis]

Do you have a DOS?

 

[Brett S]

I just got my apex during the Neptune Orange and Grey days and have inevitably started to get more and more excited about it. Long story short, I'm trying to cut back on time I NEED to spend on my tank due to an ever busier work and personal life. I manually test my alkalinity almost every day to make sure nothing gets out of wack and can be corrected right away if it does. I feel like right now that is the main task I do for my tank that is most important for me to do frequently to maintain the best reef, but I am frequently doing that late at night after the kids and wife go to bed, as well as other chores.

I'm looking to add a trident to help reduce the work needed for my tank, but want to know what those who have one think about it.
Does it need alot of tinkering to keep working correctly?
Did it really reduce your need to perform manual testing?
Did it help you improve your tank, or just save you some time doing testing?
What issues have you had with yours? ( I frequently read about some supply shortages with reagent)
Anything else someone should know before purchasing one?

Thanks!

I’ve had mine for a year and a half now and I’ve been super happy with it. I haven’t manually tested alkalinity, calcium, or magnesium in close to a year and a half as well.

It doesn’t really need much tinkering. If you have it set to test 4 times a day (the minimum and the default) then you need to change the alkalinity reagent once a month and all three reagents once every two months. You should calibrate it once every two months after the full reagent change. That’s about it.

I use it to control my 2 part dosing with a DOS and it has kept my parameters very stable, which has definitely improved my tank. But before the trident I tended to be lazy and not test as frequently as I should, so my parameters would tend to wander a bit. If you are already testing frequently and keeping your parameters stable then it might not make a huge difference to your tank, but it will still save a lot of time by avoiding all the manual testing.

I only had one issue that turned out to be a clogged input line. It kept coming up with an error when it tried to test. After trying a few things I disconnected the input line and blew through it to clear it out and it’s been fine ever since.

There were definitely some reagent supply issues when the DOS first came out and again a few months ago because of Covid, but I think they have been worked out and reagent seems to be in stock just about everywhere now.

 

[SuncrestReef]

I've had my Trident since the initial launch date in May 2019. It's worked great, and definitely saves me the time and headache of manual testing. It also revealed the daily/nightly alk swing and allowed me to fine-tune the dosing to smooth that out.

See my detailed Trident experience here, including a lot of screenshots and graphs:

Trident - Hands on

I received my Trident today and set it up. For full details, see this post in my build thread: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/suncrestreefs-red-sea-reefer-xl-425-build.358990/page-31#post-6036364 Here's a photo of the inside mechanics of the Trident. I haven't seen this posted anywhere...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Tuffyyyyy]

Does it need alot of tinkering to keep working correctly? Almost none. I think I've had 2 errors in the 6 months I've had mine, but I think it was a low reagent issue or something that was very simple to fix.
Did it really reduce your need to perform manual testing? I didn't do manual testing in the first place so it is nice to have some figures
Did it help you improve your tank, or just save you some time doing testing? I guess it improved my tank in the sense that I know stuff is consistent now.
What issues have you had with yours? ( I frequently read about some supply shortages with reagent) The thing that has bothered me is how poor it seems to work with the DOS. I thought going Trident + DOS would mean I don't have to touch alk again, but the auto calibration feature doesn't seem to do anything yet.
Anything else someone should now before purchasing one? Reagent tough to find but I'm happy with my purchase thus far.

 

[cshouston]

I just contacted Neptune support to work out an issue with alkalinity testing being off when part of the alk/cal/mag trio test, but aside from that it has been amazing. It’s so nice to no longer need to run those tests manually. I only wish they had a machine that tested nitrate and phosphate too!

Personally, I haven’t had any issues finding reagents. I just got a six month supply, and my LFS seems to have two month boxes on a regular basis.

 

[FlyPenFly]

Will never have a reef tank without a Trident or other reliable alk monitor. It's just too useful. For a first generation product it's very very good but I got a later batch than other people and let it mature a year before I adopted it.

 

[Joshinator99]

The Trident has been absolutely amazing. Alkalinity and Calcium have never been more stable because of it and the tank has never looked better (used in tandem with the DOS & DDR). Two thumbs up for sure.

They only give you 4‘ of tubing to draw samples with, and you cannot extend it. With my sump and Bashea skimmer taking up the entire cabinet, I had to get creative. I ended up remote mounting it in the garage under the DT room! Worked out good...just enough tubing.

 

[Yevoc]

Does it need alot of tinkering to keep working correctly?
No I haven't messed with mine since I set it up.

Did it really reduce your need to perform manual testing?
I went to once a week Alk, 2x a month Cal, and 1 a month Mag just to double check. Less than I was checking before.

Did it help you improve your tank, or just save you some time doing testing?
I think the graphing of trends is super valuable. I started dosing NO3 and saw a 25% change in uptake. I saw this during the week and the Trident upped the dosing. Before I would have just went "dang my alk is really low" when I did my Sat. testing.

What issues have you had with yours? ( I frequently read about some supply shortages with reagent).
You can usually find reagent. Use Google Shopping. Some shop somewhere has it. People seem to get really worked up is BRS doesn't have it during black friday.

Anything else someone should know before purchasing one?
You can't alter the hair thin black intake hose in any way. Longer or shorter. No extensions. It is a little annoying and you end up with it pretty close to your sump. Placement of the Trident didn't end up where I had planned. So plan accordingly.

 

[ca1ore]

Been very happy with mine. Issues have all been of the operator-error variety. Forgot to put the sample tube back in the tank, left sample tube in the calibration solution .... those kinds of things. The 6 month reagent pack has required some perseverance to fund, but the 2 month has been readily available.

 

[Waters]

Does it need alot of tinkering to keep working correctly?
I have not messed with mine at all since it was initally set up almost a year ago.
Did it really reduce your need to perform manual testing?
Absolutely. I was testing almost daily. I don't manually test ALK/CA/Mg at all anymore unless there is a test result that I want to verify.
Did it help you improve your tank, or just save you some time doing testing?
Not sure if it helped my tank or not since I was manually testing a lot prior to the trident. I has definitely stopped ALK swings though.
What issues have you had with yours? ( I frequently read about some supply shortages with reagent)
Anything else someone should know before purchasing one?
Only issues I have had are related to finding the reagents. I also don't like Neptune's decision to not allow you to change out individual bottles of reagent which forces you to dump some ALK every time you need to change the CA and Mg. I kind of fixed that by increasing the amount of times I test ALK each day to 6....may as well use it rather than throw it away.