New Monitor with suprising results! Help

joejayhawk

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Been in the Saltwater/Reef hobby for over 30 years. Have a 100 gallon mixed reef tank with live rock that I have had/used for over 20 years (with some tank failures...rebuilds..etc.) I have a sump that has a skimmer that seems to pull alot out, a refug, will run some carbon and GFO, filter sock and polyfilter. I dose two part and kalkwasser with my ATO. I also use a CO2 scrubber on my skimmer. I am pretty good about doing a 20% per month water change using RO filtered water. I also have alot of flow in the tank with 3 powerheads and a Gyro that gives me, I hope, alot of O2 exchange in the tank. I currently have 2 tangs, two Anthias, a Royal Gramma, Two wrasses and a clown fish. The tank is loaded with some softies, LPS and about two years ago I started to venture into more SPS including some acros.

Here's the rub/question. Over Xmas my kids gave me a Seneye Reef monitor. I have not used the PAR reading feature yet but was shocked to see my Ammonia (NH3) levels at .499. I also now know what I expected and that is a varying PH range of 7.6 to 8.1. My fish are doing great! My corals are also, for the most part, doing good but have experienced some STN in some Acro colonies that did great...growing for 8 or 9 month only to slowly die off (not all). I don't know if the NH3 reading is an issue? I bought some cheep Ammonia test strips that show no levels. I also don't know what else to do about consistently raising my PH levels to a 8-8.3 range.
My other current readings are: Phospate .3 ppm, Nitrate 30 ppm, Calcium 450, KH 9.5, Mag 1350

Sorry for the rant but any advice would be appreciated!
 

Uncle99

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Assuming you immerse the slide in saltwater for at least 24 hours before reading....just checking.
That reading doesn’t sound correct...
 

shanescycling

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Its a faulty unit.
Mine did the exact same thing this month, read .4999 no matter what, even when I tried fresh mixed salt. i messaged support and they asked for a pic of the slide. After seeing the pic they said it’s faulty unit and asked where I bought it to work on getting a replacement. Still waiting to hear back from them on next step, but in the meantime don’t worry about your tank.
 

Jonify

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My pH was always different based on the slide. One slide would read 7.6, the next 7.9, the next 8.0. I ended up using another test kit to get the actual pH, then I used the trim function on the Seneye to make it match, and then used the Seneye from then on to monitor pH. Ammonia uses the same slide, so it's possible it's just the slide that is busted, not the Seneye.

OH--and with the PAR reading, lost of folks have found the Seneye nearly doubles what that actual PAR reading is. So keep that in mind when you do a PAR test and think "what the heck, it can't be that high!" I had this experience with my Red Sea REEF LED. Red Sea said 450 at the surface of my Max Nano, Seneye said "NOPE, IT'S 700" ... this problem doesn't seem to carry over if you have T5 or Hallides ... just LED.
 

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