My Trident Review

[K7BMG]

I will have my money lined up for the moment they allow single daily testing. I feel it is necessary with the scarcity of the reagents at times. it would be nice to be able to drop it to 1 test a day to prolong what you have left, and decrease the likelihood of not having replacement reagent to restock before running out. Hmmmm I wonder if you can use the 24v power adapter instead of the onelink cable , and connect to the energy bar, and just power it off during the time of day you don't want it testing?

I have not been aware of a reagent shortage. The 6 month sets are out of stock a lot I have noticed, but the others have been in stock whenever I needed to order.
I always have one on hand at the ready, sometimes two.

I read somewhere the 4 test minimum will never change as it has to do with the functionality of the unit. Its to maintain calibration and I am assuming here to keep the lines from clogging up as they will or can dry out. YMMV.
So unfortunately you might be forced into a different system.
As with all things in this hobby its wise to always have extras of the important stuff on the shelf anyway.

 

[Sleepydoc]

I have not been aware of a reagent shortage. The 6 month sets are out of stock a lot I have noticed, but the others have been in stock whenever I needed to order.
I always have one on hand at the ready, sometimes two.

I read somewhere the 4 test minimum will never change as it has to do with the functionality of the unit. Its to maintain calibration and I am assuming here to keep the lines from clogging up as they will or can dry out. YMMV.
So unfortunately you might be forced into a different system.
As with all things in this hobby its wise to always have extras of the important stuff on the shelf anyway.

I've read the same about the minimum number of tests per day - that the minimum is set to keep the lines from clogging and because the reagents expire. (Of course I have no idea where I saw that at this point...) I will say that I've talked to several people who thought 4 tests per day wasn't necessary and then saw a lot of unexpected variability in their Alk levels, so I'm not quite as skeptical as I once was.

If you don't have an open 1link port you can use an aquabus cable for communication and a 24V DC power supply for power but you'd have to buy those separately.

 

[chicago]

I do not mind the testing requirements.. I was spending some good $$ on hanna reagents.. and I have to believe that I have save a pricey frag or two with the ability to monitor and prevent alk swings and more. I love the fact that i can take the sample line.. put it into a glass of fresshly made salt water, purge the sample line and do a full test and know where my make up salt water is.. and then put the sample line back in the tank . purge the sample line and back at the start of the race testing the tank water. Once you get the feel for the program and working with the reagents.. love it...

 

[HMpops]

I will have my money lined up for the moment they allow single daily testing. I feel it is necessary with the scarcity of the reagents at times. it would be nice to be able to drop it to 1 test a day to prolong what you have left, and decrease the likelihood of not having replacement reagent to restock before running out. Hmmmm I wonder if you can use the 24v power adapter instead of the onelink cable , and connect to the energy bar, and just power it off during the time of day you don't want it testing?

You can set the Trident to manual and test as few times as you'd like

 

[vhuang168]

You can set the Trident to manual and test as few times as you'd like

This will cause issues with lines clogging. Which in turn will most likely cause you to have to send the unit back to get it serviced.

 

[User1]

This will cause issues with lines clogging. Which in turn will most likely cause you to have to send the unit back to get it serviced.

Agree. The lowest recommended testing is 4/2/2 and it is for a couple reasons. In any case shoot Neptune a email/support ticket and see what they recommend. It isn't hard to clear the waste and sample lines. We put them on, remember? We can just remove them and use warm water. I had to do this when my Brightwell block produced a lot of fine particles for some reason.

But I agree - I wouldn't flip to manual and only run 1 a day.

 

[vhuang168]

Agree. The lowest recommended testing is 4/2/2 and it is for a couple reasons. In any case shoot Neptune a email/support ticket and see what they recommend. It isn't hard to clear the waste and sample lines. We put them on, remember? We can just remove them and use warm water. I had to do this when my Brightwell block produced a lot of fine particles for some reason.

But I agree - I wouldn't flip to manual and only run 1 a day.

That is assuming that the lines after the connectors are clogged. Sometimes the lines inside the unit are the ones clogged.

 

[HMpops]

This will cause issues with lines clogging. Which in turn will most likely cause you to have to send the unit back to get it serviced.

Agree...I probably should have elaborated.

 

[DMH67]

So I received my Trident a couple days ago. I've been playing around with it and here's what I've come up with so far.

They give you a small piece of paper in the box that tells you to go to TASKS>Trident Initial Setup. They also give you a piece of paper with a BIG NO NO on plugging it in before you run the Initial Setup.

Once you run the Initial setup there is a youtube playlist that actually shows you step by step on installing the reagents, how to install the reagent because the small hoses coming out the reagents have to point in a certain direction.

During the playlist they recommend that you upgrade your Apex then plug in your Trident. I upgraded my Apex before plugging it in and immediately noticed that 4 of my FMM modules were "Out of date" So I started to upgrade them.

During the upgrade of my FMM's I went to upgrade Module 14, My last FMM. Once everything was upgraded, I finally plugged in the Trident.

Immediately after I noticed the following.

My apex started to crashed every ~10-15 minutes or so and would become unreachable to the point where I had to reboot it. It became a constant thing every 10-15 minutes or so where I had to reboot constantly.

At first I was thinking It could be the TRIDENT because the FMM's were showing up in increments of 3. I would delete them all manually, and it would crash. Then on reboot I would find 3 more FMM's. Again it would crash and another 3 FMM's would appear. At first I thought it was the actual trident since it does 3 tests (Alk,Cal,Mg) and it was just weird that it was adding 3 FMM's in increments of 3.

Still didn't have a solution at the time so I continued. At this point I already had the Trident plugged in and had already finished the Initial setup. Once I get back into my home page I noticed the Trident was in "Testing Mode"

After "Testing Mode" finished I ended up with this.

No Results. So what did I do? Ran a manual test again. What happened this time? Same results. So I started poking around. During the initial setup they tell you the Trident should prime the lines automatically. I was thinking maybe it didn't prime properly. So I went into the trident and ran a manual prime.

Then I ran another "Combined Test" which should be all 3 tests but this time I only got an ALK reading.

Don't forget this is all happening during the 10-15 minute increments of my apex crashing non stop. I contact Thomas over at Apex and he recommended that I change the 1Link cable on my Trident. As soon as I changed the 1Link cable and also used a different port on EB832 bar. I finally got a reading.

Boom finally got some results. I'm not sure if it was the actual 1Link Cable or if it was the port on the EB832 bar but if you run into the same issue I would recommend just trying a different port on the EB832 bar first and then try replacing the cable if needed.

SOOOOO. Now that the Trident is running properly and testing properly I was hoping the crashing would stop...

Nope. Apex continued to crash every 10-15minutes. Now I knew it wasn't the Trident since it seemed to be working properly so I started unplugging all my FMM's to see which one it was.

Finally I figured out that it was module 14. So once I upgraded module 14 it took the update and everything showed up fine but for some reason it DID NOT like the update. If i left module 14 (FMM-14) unplugged the apex would no longer crash. This was the very first FMM that I bought roughly 3 years ago, so it was the oldest FMM I have.

Luckily I have an entire drawer with a spare probe of each type. More important probes like PH and Salinity I typically keep 2 just incase. Luckily I also keep SV1 solenoids, 1Link cables, USB cables, ETC. I basically have a spare of everything important just incase. I had an extra FMM so I quickly replaced it. Once I replaced it, everything was back up and running.

My Guess? The hardware on the older FMM that I had did not like the update and it crashed it some how. Luckily it was not the Trident.

SOME ADVICE: Upgrade your Apex OS now if you plan on getting a TRIDENT, then upgrade all your modules. This way you don't have to do it all at once and sit there trying to figure out any issues. unfortunately I got the unit when the new firmware was released so I had to do it all at once.

Dummy me thought I had a broken or bent front cover but since I was trying to be extremely careful with it, I gently pushed it in. Once it gets near the back (like it is in the picture) you have to give it a little push and it will sit flush.

My Thoughts:
Overall a good product. It's actually testing spot on with my Hannah checkers. I have 2 hannah checkers of each type and ran 2 CAL/ALK tests on 2 units and came within a range of .02 within each test.

It's actually extremely easy to use. Once you get it up and running you can request a manual test at any time you want. you can also change the programming to do 4 tests a day up to 24 tests a day.

It also keeps track of the waste, during the initial setup it will ask you for the size of your waste container so it can keep track of it. I have it connected to a drain and that's also an option.

I've had it running a test every hour for the past 24 hours just to fine tune everything and then I will knock it back to the 4 tests a day. Even with 24 tests a day (1 each hour) I haven't noticed the ATO running more than what it usually does. It must use a very minimal amount of water to run these tests.

Tests can take anywhere between 5-10 minutes for all each and all 3 roughly take around 20 minutes.

The device isn't completely silent but it isn't loud. The DOS unit is actually a lot louder than the Trident so I'm actually really happen with the noise level.

I like how they did the setup with video this time instead of the images like they use for the AWC task. The only thing I would tell them to do is have the user upgrade their APEX first and then modules incase anyone runs into the same issue I did.

Overall setup took 15-20 minutes. Extremely easy to use. There's roughly 7-9 minutes of videos so it can easily be setup within 15-20 minutes.

Things I would tell Apex to make this better?
Have the user upgrade their APEX first and then modules incase anyone runs into the same issue I did with the new OS bricking my FMM module.

Final Conclusion:
GO BUY ONE RIGHT NOW. TOTALLY WORTH IT.

I own A LOT of apex equipment. Now with the new update I can connect the extra 2 DOS units that I have since I had reached the limit before. Now with the new update I can have even more apex equipment. This is one of the best investments of my life. Apex in general is the best reefing equipment I've ever bought. It's insurance for my investment. My tank is completely completely automated. From Daily water changes, to weekly water changes everything. I come in once every month and pour salt into my salt bin, push a button to let the apex know and back to auto water changes. Now that I got ALK/CA/MG to a good spot, the apex will control the PH in my Calcium reactor automatically and keep all my elements in check. I will use the 2 new DOS units to get the fine tuning with 2 part on top of my calcium reactor. I have 2 ATO's with an SV1 solonoid and depending on my PH the apex will either top off with normal water or kalk water from my kalk reactor. I could continue to go on and on and on. Apex does everything for me. Even turns on the RO unit to make more water when its low, then when my salt bin gets low from auto water changes it stops them, fills the salt bin with ro water and bugs me until i come and pour the salt in, then I push a button and automatically back in business with water changes. I can enjoy my tank without ever having to do anything. I've built redundancy into every spot that I could find and It was the best decision of my life.

I texted a friend of mine a picture of the unit when I get it up and running and asked if he was going to get one. His response was "no, its just another failure point". I agree and disagree. Even if you just use the Trident for monitoring, it is not a failure point. It's insurance and peace of mind.

TRIDENT ****:

if anyone has any questions please feel free to ask. I will try to answer the best I can. If anyone want's a specific picture let me know and I can gladly take it.

Can you use the trident with the Neptune apex classic ?

 

[vetteguy53081]

Can you use the trident with the Neptune apex classic ?

Unfortunately no