Reefbot one year review

[EchoStar]

So this is my first review of a product but I felt like I needed to put this out there due to the lack of information on this product.

When I was looking for a testing machine for my reef thier was several things I looked at. One of the man features I like about the reefbot was that I could use several different reagent that could be easily obtained and I could test several different elements. I like the idea of this due to the fear that if the company went under I wanted to still be able to use the product. I also liked that I didn't have to buy a controller or full system set up for it to work.

When I got the reefbot I was super excited and it was easy to set up. Programming the system in the app was easy and user friendly. The machine was a little bigger than what I thought it would be but looked nice.

After I got it set up and programmed I ran a few test and found out that something was wrong with the machine. After watching it try and preform several test and failing I contacted support. Contacting support was easy and again user friendly. To contact support is easily done through a chat box in the app. However, I quickly found out that thier support is not located in the US. I live on the west coast and would not get a reply till 2 or 4 in the morning. So I ended up staying up late one night and found out that the bar that the reagents hang on got slightly bent during shipping and just needed to get bent back into place so that the magnetic stirrer could spin and the bottom of the motor would not get caught on the viles.

After that the system ran smooth for several months with me testing my elements daily. My only complaint at that time was that the machine was loud when it test and it would take 4 hours for me to test alk, cal, mag, and phosphate. I would run these test over night so the length of the test did not bother me much after I got used to the noise at night.

One thing I forgot to mention that took me a while to figure out was that this machine goes though a lot of water. It does require a rodi source and a waste area. I knew this going into the machine but I was not aware of how much water it actually went though. I started out with 500ml bottle for both rodi and waste and found that I could not get all my test in with that amount of water. So I upgraded to a 1L rodi source and a 2L waste bottle. This lasted about a week of daily testing. I will admitted the I now have it running out of a 5gal rodi jug and a 5 gal waste jug. This is due to my own laziness that when I left for 3 weeks for vacation and never went back to the jugs.

When it comes time to doing maintenance of the reefbot by adding new reagents it very easy. I will add that that the reefbot uses 20ml viles but is only able to use about 10ml before it need to be refilled. The system does not warn you when your out of reagents it just stop running the test and you will need to pay attention to the dates your test where ran because there where a few times I thought my alk or cal was good and it turned out that the test had not ran in a few days so when I log in to see the results in the morning I was just seeing the old results.

I have also found that when it comes to replacing your reagents you will need to fully replace the remaining 10ml reagent about once a month or every 2 months. I learned this the hard way. I replacing my reagents by adding a new 10ml of reagent to the vials only to find out (after contacting support again) that the reagent was bad and needed to be fully replaced.

Over the year I have also had one of the silicone tubing tear on me that leads to one of the pumps. This resulted in me flooding a rather large spot in my living room floor because I keep trying to run the test over and over again to find the answers of what was going on.

I have also had the magnetic stirrer go out on me over this time. Again I had to run several test waste a lot a reagent before I just broke down and contacted support over what was going on and have them trouble shoot it. Luckily I was still under warranty and they are sending me a new motor.

Overall, the reefbot is easy-to-use and user-friendly. It does a great job of ot testing and I find the results to be accurate to what I was getting by hand. However, reagents and water is used in large volumes and large waste and rodi jugs must be used. There is also not much trouble shooting you can do on your own for error readings and support has to be contacted often. Support is easy to contact but one will have to stay up late or get up early if they want the trouble shooting done quicker than a single message sent daily. While having several different reagent that was easy to get at the store orginally a selling point for me I find having several different boxes of reagents all in different stages of being used annoying and expensive when half of it gets wasted every few months.

I am not hear to bash or praise any company just stating my experience with this product.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Nice! Thanks for sharing this!

 

[WallyB]

Thanks for the honest write up.

So what Tests are you doing (Alk, Calcium, Mag, Phosphate?) and what regeants have you found best for this type of Automated Tritration? To me the most important two regular weekly tests I would do is Alk and PO4. The rest of the parameters fall in to place if those two are maintained (When dosing Two Part and running GFO). Once a month for the rest.

Also when you say you have to replace reagents with fresh reageants and throw away remaining, is that from contamination, air exposure, or left overs? Or another reasons?

 

[EchoStar]

Thanks for the honest write up.

So what Tests are you doing (Alk, Calcium, Mag, Phosphate?) and what regeants have you found best for this type of Automated Tritration? To me the most important two regular weekly tests I would do is Alk and PO4. The rest of the parameters fall in to place if those two are maintained (When dosing Two Part and running GFO). Once a month for the rest.

Also when you say you have to replace reagents with fresh reageants and throw away remaining, is that from contamination, air exposure, or left overs? Or another reasons?

I started out running all tests daily because I had gotten a doser i was trying to make sure was programmed correctly. I ended up taking my phosphate test to weekly and keeping my alk, cal and mag as daily. The main reason I got the tester was so I could test regularly with out the hassle.

As far as replacing the reagents every month to 2 months I would have to throw out what remained in the 10ml vial. This was especially true of my red sea alk test. This was the one I had the most problems with. I dont believe it was air exposure though that did cross my mind and I replaced the vials with new ones but it really didn't make much of a difference. To be completely honest I'm not sure why the reagents went bad but I always would run into the same problem. I would run the test a few times and not get results which then would lead to me contacting support and them telling me to replace the reagent. After a few runs of this I got tired of wasting 20ml of reagent every few months compared to 10ml so it just became part of my maintenance.

I use red sea mag and alk
And api cal and phosphate

I did find the api reagents lasted longer then the red sea so maybe a brand thing. Really not sure

 

[Ayrtoo]

Ive heard the salifert and giesmann test kits work really well with it; i'd love to get one, but importing one into my country will make it close to $1500 0_0
I can buy a standalone GHL KH director for another $100 lol

 

[Mz. Fix It]

I too have had my Reefbot for over a year now. I am a bit perplexed by your statement that the bot does not let you know when reagents are running low, as mine emails me on an ongoing basis. I will get an email stating I have enough reagent for 7 more test. The next test I run it emails me telling me I can now get 6 more test out of the reagent. When I ignore it I finally get an email stating it can not run the test I requested because the reagent is "empty", which like you said it is only 1/2 empty.

I worked with Haty from the company on going for a few issues I had as well. Normally I would say that is bad, however, I learned a lot about the bot during the process and feel very confident now breaking into the bot and making any needed adjustments if something seems off. One of my motors had to be replaced as well, the motor that makes the needle go up and down. I thought I needed a new motor or something or the other because the needle kept getting bent to pieces during testing as well. Haty instructed me on how to make a micro adjustment to get the needle moved over. However, as you mentioned about the time difference, I wasn't patient enough to wait for his email with the solution to the needle breaking so I broke the unit open again and used good old fashioned common sense while I watched it work and realized if I provided a minor "attitude adjustment" to the needle housing it would work. Haven't had a single needle break since then.

As far as pouring out old reagents, Haty never suggested that to me so I have always just topped them off when I get the email that any specific reagent is running low.

I use mine to run nitrate test, phosphate and from time to time I double check my alk & cal with it. I also run daily alk, ca & mg test with my Trident tester. I purchased the Reefbot to do the test the Trident wasn't capable of performing. The Redsea ca testing reagent is the one major flaw in that the B&C mix into one bottle goes bad "supposedly" after 2 weeks. However, again, I just continue to use it. When I eventually get an odder than usual reading then I change it out....or top it off with new mix. I have tried the API test kits as well with my bot and started with API when I initially got into the hobby back in the day when I only did freshwater tanks. When I expanded my OCD hobby into saltwater tanks I found API not to be quite as reliable as I feel they are with my freshwater tank testing. When I used them with my bot I didn't feel the results were as accurate as they should be compared to other kits I have purchased. I ended up doing research and watching videos that the bot folks put out there regarding different testing agents and finally landed on using Tropic Marin for my nitrates testing. It has been pretty accurate when I compare it to my Hanna nitrate tester so I have stayed true to that brand for nitrates. Other tests I stick close to Redsea.

Initially I was terrified of this expensive piece of high end science equipment. I was afraid if I looked at it wrong it might break. I was even afraid to remove the cover while the tests are running in fear it would skew my results. After my extensive help and instructions from Haty I soon realized I definitely need to respect this beast, however, I also feel confident doing any work required and monitor it's actions by watching it test from time to time just to feel confident it's doing what it's designed to do.

Would I buy the bot again knowing what I know now? Absolutely. It certainly isn't perfect but it's a huge help. Do I rely solely on it for all my answers? Again, absolutely not. I will never feel fully confident enough to "set it and forget it"....but as a helping tool in this hobby it is a godsend, for me at least.....especially paired with my Trident tester as it's support. I still have the room next to my aquarium room in my house set up as a laboratory for testing both my fresh & salt tanks but I now mainly use my lab as a backup to my testers for my salts. If I could find testers like the bot and Trident for my freshwater tanks then I've hit the holy grail!

 

[HighChiefKC]

I’m with @Mz. Fix It mine emails me and sends alerts every single test I take. It’s like obsessed with letting me know every single thing that is going on! I’ve only had mine running for about 6 months. I don’t want to jinx myself, but I haven’t had a single problem with mine. I did get an alert that I need to replace the syringe and my laziness has kept me from replacing it yet. I will Monday probably.
I also have mine to do what my Trident can’t. Originally I was testing Nitrate, Nitrite, ammonia and phosphate. Because my tank was new. Now I’m just testing nitrate and phosphate. I test it once or twice a week manually.
I’ve had more problems with the trident. But I like having both to work together.

 

[EchoStar]

I may have to look into my setting maybe I missed something with the notification. Thanks I honestly didn't know. Kinda of excited to find this out due to that being a head ache for me

 

[idol]

So this is my first review of a product but I felt like I needed to put this out there due to the lack of information on this product.

When I was looking for a testing machine for my reef thier was several things I looked at. One of the man features I like about the reefbot was that I could use several different reagent that could be easily obtained and I could test several different elements. I like the idea of this due to the fear that if the company went under I wanted to still be able to use the product. I also liked that I didn't have to buy a controller or full system set up for it to work.

When I got the reefbot I was super excited and it was easy to set up. Programming the system in the app was easy and user friendly. The machine was a little bigger than what I thought it would be but looked nice.

After I got it set up and programmed I ran a few test and found out that something was wrong with the machine. After watching it try and preform several test and failing I contacted support. Contacting support was easy and again user friendly. To contact support is easily done through a chat box in the app. However, I quickly found out that thier support is not located in the US. I live on the west coast and would not get a reply till 2 or 4 in the morning. So I ended up staying up late one night and found out that the bar that the reagents hang on got slightly bent during shipping and just needed to get bent back into place so that the magnetic stirrer could spin and the bottom of the motor would not get caught on the viles.

After that the system ran smooth for several months with me testing my elements daily. My only complaint at that time was that the machine was loud when it test and it would take 4 hours for me to test alk, cal, mag, and phosphate. I would run these test over night so the length of the test did not bother me much after I got used to the noise at night.

One thing I forgot to mention that took me a while to figure out was that this machine goes though a lot of water. It does require a rodi source and a waste area. I knew this going into the machine but I was not aware of how much water it actually went though. I started out with 500ml bottle for both rodi and waste and found that I could not get all my test in with that amount of water. So I upgraded to a 1L rodi source and a 2L waste bottle. This lasted about a week of daily testing. I will admitted the I now have it running out of a 5gal rodi jug and a 5 gal waste jug. This is due to my own laziness that when I left for 3 weeks for vacation and never went back to the jugs.

When it comes time to doing maintenance of the reefbot by adding new reagents it very easy. I will add that that the reefbot uses 20ml viles but is only able to use about 10ml before it need to be refilled. The system does not warn you when your out of reagents it just stop running the test and you will need to pay attention to the dates your test where ran because there where a few times I thought my alk or cal was good and it turned out that the test had not ran in a few days so when I log in to see the results in the morning I was just seeing the old results.

I have also found that when it comes to replacing your reagents you will need to fully replace the remaining 10ml reagent about once a month or every 2 months. I learned this the hard way. I replacing my reagents by adding a new 10ml of reagent to the vials only to find out (after contacting support again) that the reagent was bad and needed to be fully replaced.

Over the year I have also had one of the silicone tubing tear on me that leads to one of the pumps. This resulted in me flooding a rather large spot in my living room floor because I keep trying to run the test over and over again to find the answers of what was going on.

I have also had the magnetic stirrer go out on me over this time. Again I had to run several test waste a lot a reagent before I just broke down and contacted support over what was going on and have them trouble shoot it. Luckily I was still under warranty and they are sending me a new motor.

Overall, the reefbot is easy-to-use and user-friendly. It does a great job of ot testing and I find the results to be accurate to what I was getting by hand. However, reagents and water is used in large volumes and large waste and rodi jugs must be used. There is also not much trouble shooting you can do on your own for error readings and support has to be contacted often. Support is easy to contact but one will have to stay up late or get up early if they want the trouble shooting done quicker than a single message sent daily. While having several different reagent that was easy to get at the store orginally a selling point for me I find having several different boxes of reagents all in different stages of being used annoying and expensive when half of it gets wasted every few months.

I am not hear to bash or praise any company just stating my experience with this product.

I also had very similar experiences and ended up returning the unit for a full refund.

 

[Philly Reefer]

You guys must be a unicorn. There are lots of horror stories about reefbot and their support that preventing me from buying reefbot.

Glad it working out good for you guys though.

 

[idol]

You guys must be a unicorn. There are lots of horror stories about reefbot and their support that preventing me from buying reefbot.

Glad it working out good for you guys though.

I actually got the unit and had operational problems right off. Sent a photo of the internals and they seen a wire that they missed soldiering. I was offered return for repair or solider it in place my solider the wire and found the cost of operation was crazy. I the sent it back for refund. I will say I bought TRIDENT and it's been worth every penny.

 

[Mz. Fix It]

I’m with @Mz. Fix It mine emails me and sends alerts every single test I take. It’s like obsessed with letting me know every single thing that is going on! I’ve only had mine running for about 6 months. I don’t want to jinx myself, but I haven’t had a single problem with mine. I did get an alert that I need to replace the syringe and my laziness has kept me from replacing it yet. I will Monday probably.
I also have mine to do what my Trident can’t. Originally I was testing Nitrate, Nitrite, ammonia and phosphate. Because my tank was new. Now I’m just testing nitrate and phosphate. I test it once or twice a week manually.
I’ve had more problems with the trident. But I like having both to work together.

I have to admit, for the super odd size needle the bot uses, and having all of mine bent and crumpled early on due to the variance in where it was dropping down and cramming into my vials rather than going thru the lid like it was supposed to do, I finally started resetting my needle usage in the software showing it now has zero uses/starting over with a new needle when in reality I'm still using the same needle. Could that be bad? Maybe, maybe not....haven't noticed any repercussions yet.

I have a medically challenged son and he has many different specialists that we see in office....often.....so I was able to obtain many variations of needles, lengths, gauges.....apparently Reefbot has theirs custom made to specs that are not obtainable to the rest of the universe so I was forced to buy those specific needles/syringes....so....am I going to throw out a $5 needle that is normally sold in "regular" sizes for .45 cents a piece....not unless it begins to be a problem. I'm sure the company has a reason for us to change the needle out in specific intervals other than profit.....but....my theory is if it's working I'm not going to change it out til I have to.

Certainly not saying I encourage you to stop changing yours out, just saying I haven't had any bad side effects leaving mine in for a much longer duration.

 

[Mz. Fix It]

One oddity with my bot that just started happening about a month ago....my bot is deciding to test whenever IT wants to and has stopped following my weekly Sunday schedule. I was going to email Hady to ask about it but just haven't gotten around to it.

With my Trident I got over the whole slamming through the reagents when the software would only allow a min of 4 tests a day. For me that was excessive and when the reagents began to be sparse due to low supply and no where to buy locally or online .....I said to heck with their schedule and I started doing a daily manual setting "combined" test each morning when I get up. By the time I get to my lab room I'm ready with the test results to record into my Apex chart. I can now get 4 to 5 months out of the bottles of reagents.

I tell you this to say that is another reason I haven't worried much about the schedule for the bot since at this point I just decide what's important to me any given day and run a test in the software when I want the info.

 

[EchoStar]

I'm glad to hear that other people have had similar experiences. I was starting to think I was the odd ball. Tho I am a complete goof ball . Overall, I like my reef bot but for the price point I'm surprised about the number of issues I have had with it. I normally don't change out my needle as a should. I really have not seen any issues with this but who knows too.

 

[AKReef]

I've had my reefbot for over a year. I've had a few issues during this time. Every time support has been very helpful getting me back up and running. So much so, Reef Kinetics' chemist proactively sent me emails telling me that my tests weren't running correctly and what I should to do correct them. Now that's service!

I too am confused about not getting an indication that reagents need to be filled. The app shows the remaining volume in the vials, and I get email notifications stating how many tests can be run with the remaining reagents.

The biggest issues I've had were that I had to reflash the sd card twice. Once when I first got it, and after the bot just quit responding a few months ago. I recently replaced the pump heads, and something isn't working right now. I haven't had time to mess with it to fix it, but I am running a trident so the big 3 are covered.

One big complaint I and others seem to have are the proprietary needles that they use. But I get it, they need a steady stream of income and so buying replacement needles is the equivalent to making folks sign up for a subscription service. I too use needles past their stated useful lives.

I thought it was interesting to see that the Mastertronic is basically using the same concept as the reefbot, which was really disappointing. My biggest complaint with the reefbot is the use of off the shelf-reagents. The per test cost is just too high, unlike other options like the Trident. I ended up just using the reefbot for tests the trident doesn't perform and at most run them once or twice a week. It would be really nice to see the reefbot use their own test reagents or develop processes to use off-the-shelf tests that use less of the reagents. I'm sure it could be done.

 

[richiero]

Ive heard the salifert and giesmann test kits work really well with it; i'd love to get one, but importing one into my country will make it close to $1500 0_0
I can buy a standalone GHL KH director for another $100 lol

look into the mastertronic should be hitting the states May or June. Coralvue is currently testing it

 

[ca1ore]

Is reef kinetics/reefbot even still around anymore?

 

[richiero]

Is reef kinetics/reefbot even still around anymore?

I looked for them after I read this and I did find their website but the reefbot was out of stock. They had like an aquarium store tester on the site.https://www.reefkinetics.com/product/reefbot/

 

[DrMMI]

I messaged their support staff earlier this week through the app and never heard back. I messaged them again this morning through WhatsApp and still nothing. I think the inventor of it is a member here.

 

[richiero]

imagine paying 900 dollars for a product and its not supported anymore that's just nuts!!