scotto
Community Member
Hello Everyone,
I'm curious out there if anyone has had similar issues. My Neptune trident, out of the box, was testing close to my Hanna checkers. After running the unit until the reagents ran out, that's when the calibration issues started to occur. Magnesium and calcium were very off. I eventually calibrated to the white bottled solution, and still, numbers weren't making sense with my dosing, or Hanna checker numbers.
Eventually, I calibrated to tank water, but I used my Red Sea magnesium test kit as the magnesium input. This maybe was my first mistake. It seems from what little information I can find, that the Trident calculates magnesium and calcium together with a two reagent test. Thus, I assume the measurement of each independent variable may be slightly dependent. This would have potential consequences that if the inputted calibration of one of the variables (calcium or magnesium) was incorrect, there could be an incorrect output for one or both of the measured variables. However, this is all just speculation. I let the trident to keep testing for approximately 1 month before I intervened again.
Recently, I sent off ICP tests of my aquarium. Calcium was 434 ppm, which was close to my Hanna checker measurements that day. However, Magnesium, at 1333 ppm, was much lower than what I was testing with my Red Sea test kit, which was around 1400 ppm. I recently picked up a Salifert test kit, and found to to read near my recent ICP test results.
I then re-calibrated my Trident to the white bottled solution from the reagent pack, and was still getting calcium readings that were very high, around 470–480 ppm (graph attached, Hanna checker results also shown). The Trident values also showed issues in precision (calcium values showing wide swings). Because of this, I was just about to give up on my trident, but I decided to do one last ditch effort. I performed duplicate testing for calcium, magnesium, and alkalinity (in that order) on tank water with my checkers and the Salifert magnesium. I used these values to input into the trident and did a tank water calibration. THIS seemed to fix my issue. I've been testing the trident with several repeated manual tests, and the values are very close to one another (precision) and close to what I expect my tank to be at with Hanna checkers and ICP testing (accuracy).
I hope this helps anyone else. I also hope if anyone can weigh in on the magnesium calcium relationship with the trident, that may help us all as well. I'll also re-post if the unit begins to drift as testing continues.
I'm curious out there if anyone has had similar issues. My Neptune trident, out of the box, was testing close to my Hanna checkers. After running the unit until the reagents ran out, that's when the calibration issues started to occur. Magnesium and calcium were very off. I eventually calibrated to the white bottled solution, and still, numbers weren't making sense with my dosing, or Hanna checker numbers.
Eventually, I calibrated to tank water, but I used my Red Sea magnesium test kit as the magnesium input. This maybe was my first mistake. It seems from what little information I can find, that the Trident calculates magnesium and calcium together with a two reagent test. Thus, I assume the measurement of each independent variable may be slightly dependent. This would have potential consequences that if the inputted calibration of one of the variables (calcium or magnesium) was incorrect, there could be an incorrect output for one or both of the measured variables. However, this is all just speculation. I let the trident to keep testing for approximately 1 month before I intervened again.
Recently, I sent off ICP tests of my aquarium. Calcium was 434 ppm, which was close to my Hanna checker measurements that day. However, Magnesium, at 1333 ppm, was much lower than what I was testing with my Red Sea test kit, which was around 1400 ppm. I recently picked up a Salifert test kit, and found to to read near my recent ICP test results.
I then re-calibrated my Trident to the white bottled solution from the reagent pack, and was still getting calcium readings that were very high, around 470–480 ppm (graph attached, Hanna checker results also shown). The Trident values also showed issues in precision (calcium values showing wide swings). Because of this, I was just about to give up on my trident, but I decided to do one last ditch effort. I performed duplicate testing for calcium, magnesium, and alkalinity (in that order) on tank water with my checkers and the Salifert magnesium. I used these values to input into the trident and did a tank water calibration. THIS seemed to fix my issue. I've been testing the trident with several repeated manual tests, and the values are very close to one another (precision) and close to what I expect my tank to be at with Hanna checkers and ICP testing (accuracy).
I hope this helps anyone else. I also hope if anyone can weigh in on the magnesium calcium relationship with the trident, that may help us all as well. I'll also re-post if the unit begins to drift as testing continues.
