My Honest Opinion About The Alkatronic

homer1475 · Nov 19, 2020

Thought I read it takes a while for the ALK to "unsuspend" in all for reef. Like a few hours to 24 hours?

Wouldn't that throw off the reading from the alkatronic?

I honestly have no idea, just stuff I've read about all for reef, and read this thread as I was interested in the alkatronic.

dwest · Nov 19, 2020

homer1475 said:
Thought I read it takes a while for the ALK to "unsuspend" in all for reef. Like a few hours to 24 hours?

Wouldn't that throw off the reading from the alkatronic?

I honestly have no idea, just stuff I've read about all for reef, and read this thread as I was interested in the alkatronic.

I don’t use all for reef but I thought the same. When the alkatronic makes an addition, it rechecks alkalinity 2 hours later. I don’t think that is enough time for all for reef alkalinity to be measurable.

beesnreefs · Nov 19, 2020

dwest said:
I don’t use all for reef but I thought the same. When the alkatronic makes an addition, it rechecks alkalinity 2 hours later. I don’t think that is enough time for all for reef alkalinity to be measurable.

@Lou Ekus - any thoughts on this?

ReefBeta · Nov 19, 2020

homer1475 said:
Thought I read it takes a while for the ALK to "unsuspend" in all for reef. Like a few hours to 24 hours?

Wouldn't that throw off the reading from the alkatronic?

I honestly have no idea, just stuff I've read about all for reef, and read this thread as I was interested in the alkatronic.

That's news to me. Do you have link for more details on ALK in all for reef to "unsuspend"

Naturalreef · Nov 19, 2020

I have been using “all for reef” with the Alkatronic for two years with no issues or imbalance. I started from small 1 inch frags to colonies and it has kept up no problem. It’s a great product

beesnreefs · Nov 19, 2020

Naturalreef said:
I have been using “all for reef” with the Alkatronic for two years with no issues or imbalance. I started from small 1 inch frags to colonies and it has kept up no problem. It’s a great product

And you actually have the Alkatronic do the dosing? Have you ever run into any issues with you Calcium or Magnesium levels?

This is great to hear - it’s exactly what I’d like to do.

Naturalreef · Nov 20, 2020

beesnreefs said:
And you actually have the Alkatronic do the dosing? Have you ever run into any issues with you Calcium or Magnesium levels?

This is great to hear - it’s exactly what I’d like to do.

Initially I used the Alkatronic dosing pump with zero issues. Now I use Dosetronic again with zero balance issues.

dwest · Nov 21, 2020

I was hoping someone here could help. I have been using the alkatronic for 6 weeks with no issues. Yesterday, my alkatronic started measuring every 3 hours. It was measuring every 4 hours before that. I checked the measure interval under settings and it still says 4 hours. Using both bluetooth and online, I reset the interval to 4 hours (the LCD screen on the alkatronic states 4 hour interval), but no luck. I don’t have Facebook so I dont know how to get help. I will be traveling soon and am concerned something might change again. Any suggestions?

GoVols · Nov 21, 2020

dwest said:
I was hoping someone here could help. I have been using the alkatronic for 6 weeks with no issues. Yesterday, my alkatronic started measuring every 3 hours. It was measuring every 4 hours before that. I checked the measure interval under settings and it still says 4 hours. Using both bluetooth and online, I reset the interval to 4 hours (the LCD screen on the alkatronic states 4 hour interval), but no luck. I don’t have Facebook so I dont know how to get help. I will be traveling soon and am concerned something might change again. Any suggestions?

Well,
That's why I never took the latest firmware updates.

Are you getting red or blue dots for it to retest every three hours?

If so, recalibrate the entire unit including the ph probe. New pump inner tubes will stretch while breaking in.

@mitch91175

Do you have any thoughts?

dwest · Nov 21, 2020

GoVols said:
Well,
That's why I never took the latest firmware updates.

@mitch91175

Do you have any thoughts?

Did they do an update yesterday?

GoVols · Nov 21, 2020

dwest said:
Did they do an update yesterday?

d,
It takes a big install by you doing it on an older model, So, not that I know of.

Re-calibrate your six-week-old unit. PH probe and all the pumps.

It's worth a shot and those new inner tubes do stretch while breaking in.

TMB · Nov 21, 2020

@dwest
It could be the upper or lower limit threshold being exceeded. Do you have a set limit for KH to high and to low? If so what are they? What is the current KH, and what is the retest interval set at? I'll post a screenshot that helps tell the story.
If you look at mine you can see the upper and lower lines. If the result is higher or lower it tests more often. You can see where my reagent ran out and caused the spike.

GoVols · Nov 21, 2020

TMB said:
@dwest
It could be the upper or lower limit threshold being exceeded. Do you have a set limit for KH to high and to low? If so what are they? What is the current KH, and what is the retest interval set at? I'll post a screenshot that helps tell the story.
If you look at mine you can see the upper and lower lines. If the result is higher or lower it tests more often. You can see where my reagent ran out and caused the spike.

Yep,
My Alka-T test 4 times a day, but if the readings are out of bounds, "action mode" takes over and is set to re-test every two hours until the alk is back in line.

dwest · Nov 21, 2020

TMB said:
@dwest
It could be the upper or lower limit threshold being exceeded. Do you have a set limit for KH to high and to low? If so what are they? What is the current KH, and what is the retest interval set at? I'll post a screenshot that helps tell the story.
If you look at mine you can see the upper and lower lines. If the result is higher or lower it tests more often. You can see where my reagent ran out and caused the spike.

Thanks for the help. But my alkalinity is between my lower and upper limit, so it is not retesting. My lower is 8 and my upper is 9 dKH. The value is 8.2. It’s retest interval is set on every 2 hours.

So I went through the entire setup again. I changed the testing interval to 1 hour and it just tested like it was supposed to. I just changed the interval back to 4 hours and hopefully it will do that tonight. We’ll see.

BTW your alkalinity control is tight!

TMB · Nov 21, 2020

Let us know how it goes. Only other thing I can think of is how are you changing settings? like from your phone or tablet (IOS), or from android via bluetooth?, or online in the remote connection settings online?

And thank you for the Alk control comment. It's due to having Alkatronic for so long, helped me to dial things in better. I have the first version - in fact I preordered it before they were available. Testament to how long it's lasted too.

TMB · Nov 21, 2020

One more thing to look at is the screen itself. It should tell you the next test time.
mine says 19:00 (7pm) so in like 50 minutes. What does yours say?
Here’s a pic

dwest · Nov 22, 2020

TMB said:
One more thing to look at is the screen itself. It should tell you the next test time.
mine says 19:00 (7pm) so in like 50 minutes. What does yours say?
Here’s a pic

My screen always says 3 hours later than the previous, not the 4 that I want. I’ve tried my normal connection from my iPad via both WiFi and Bluetooth. I found a help email last night and Eric Tang replied. I provided him the information and we’ll see where this goes. Thanks for the help.

TMB · Nov 22, 2020

dwest said:
My screen always says 3 hours later than the previous, not the 4 that I want. I’ve tried my normal connection from my iPad via both WiFi and Bluetooth. I found a help email last night and Eric Tang replied. I provided him the information and we’ll see where this goes. Thanks for the help.

Well I guess that gets us closer to understanding why the interval is 3 not 4 like you want. For some reason it's not being saved as a new test interval. I was going to suggest that you should look at the Alkatronic screen while you hit the save button in the app, and see if the screen displays the "changes being saved" notification it flashes. I can't remember exactly what it says, but it's something like that. I think it's possible that the interval is being saved in the app but not the machine itself.

If you want to try a few things (which I know you've done a million saves already) let me know. I can think of a couple things to try. Otherwise we'll wait and see what they figure out support wise.

dwest · Nov 22, 2020

TMB said:
Well I guess that gets us closer to understanding why the interval is 3 not 4 like you want. For some reason it's not being saved as a new test interval. I was going to suggest that you should look at the Alkatronic screen while you hit the save button in the app, and see if the screen displays the "changes being saved" notification it flashes. I can't remember exactly what it says, but it's something like that. I think it's possible that the interval is being saved in the app but not the machine itself.

If you want to try a few things (which I know you've done a million saves already) let me know. I can think of a couple things to try. Otherwise we'll wait and see what they figure out support wise.

It’s weird. The alkatronic is actually receiving the information because the alkatronic screen when I save tells me the interval is 4 hours. At least that’s I what I believe the 4h is below.