Trident or Alkatronic

[turbo2oh]

I’m looking for the best option to help keep my alkalinity stable. I’m running an Innovative Marine Nuvo EXT 100 and I’ve been struggling to get started with beginner SPS. I’m thinking alkalinity swings might be the main issue.

Automation is really important for me, since I don’t have as much time as I’d like for manual testing and adjustments.

Right now I’m trying to decide between the Neptune Trident and the Alkatronic. I’m already in the Neptune ecosystem, but I’m mainly looking for something that’s as bulletproof and hands-off as possible. From what I’ve read it seems like the Alkatronic might be the better option, but I’m curious about real-world experiences.

Thanks.

 

[painter1982]

I have a Trident acm. It’s been very good. Once the reagents get below ~15% it acts up a bit. But no problems otherwise. The NP is a different story and highly don’t recommend it.

 

[Dorsetsteve]

Unless you’ve some serious Alk swings, like multiple dKH then I doubt it’s your problem. That kind of thing will be the final blow on already stressed corals but healthy ones, I’ll be careful how I say this but it’s over played. Some very sensitive, especially wild collected pieces yes but multiple generational “beginners” no. I’d be looking at heavy metal contamination, poor biology of the system, pests or an often overlooked problem like incorrect salinity.

 

[turbo2oh]

Unless you’ve some serious Alk swings, like multiple dKH then I doubt it’s your problem. That kind of thing will be the final blow on already stressed corals but healthy ones, I’ll be careful how I say this but it’s over played. Some very sensitive, especially wild collected pieces yes but multiple generational “beginners” no. I’d be looking at heavy metal contamination, poor biology of the system, pests or an often overlooked problem like incorrect salinity.

I’m open to the idea it’s something else. I was considering my lighting, but honestly it seems sufficient for monti caps. (T5 kessil hybrid, but only 24”). I did an ICP test and everything was pretty normal. Inverts, anemones, LPS all seem to be doing well. Salinity reading at 1.026. Anything else, happy to provide more info on DMs too if that’s easier.

 

[turbo2oh]

Has anyone had experience with both?

 

[Dorsetsteve]

Let’s expand a little.
So you have a Kesil T5 hybrid but the the T5 is only half the length of your aquarium. Is it just one kesil? Where are the corals placed in relation to the lighting, a full tank shot would help here.

You’ve done an ICP. Could you share that and when was that from?

When you say, you’re struggling to get going. Are the corals, dying, poorly coloured, not growing? How long have they been in your aquarium? Equally you mentioned the Cap, was it just that or others too?

 

[IPT]

A lot of valid points being made, but in my case an Alk tester made ALL the difference. My success took off after I started using the Alk tester. I was only testing once or twice a week (if that). Since I've had it, it saved me on many occasions. I forgot to fill my Kalk tank once, a line got plugged (more than once) and a pump died (once). Some of this stuff could have happened and I wouldn't of known it until the corals weren't looking good (admittingly I observe my tank much more often now than I used too). By then it's often too late. Stressed corals don't grow well and it puts all you nutrient balance out of whack and it goes sideways, quick.

With the tester within a day or so I was able to see the Alk trend going down and that allowed my know something was up and investigate.

There are for sure many variables, but for me BY FAR the best addition I ever put on my tank was automated Alk testing. Funny enough, with the Alk testing, my improved coral growth and success I actually started testing everything else more regularly. It got me excited and more involved. I am very heavily loaded with SPS. I will also say montis are usually pretty tolerant and the last to really be affected.

As to your main question I am of no help, I am using the Reef Factory KH Keeper. Pain in the bu!! to get it settled in, but once it did it's been a great asset.

 

[turbo2oh]

Let’s expand a little.
So you have a Kesil T5 hybrid but the the T5 is only half the length of your aquarium. Is it just one kesil? Where are the corals placed in relation to the lighting, a full tank shot would help here.

You’ve done an ICP. Could you share that and when was that from?

When you say, you’re struggling to get going. Are the corals, dying, poorly coloured, not growing? How long have they been in your aquarium? Equally you mentioned the Cap, was it just that or others too?

Here’s a FTS so you can see the lighting. The red monti (pictured) looks bleached. I also tried a green monti on the sanded that looks pretty browned out with few polyps left. They’ve been in about a month. Both looked ok for awhile and gradually faded.

I’ll track down the ICP results.

 

[Reef Jedi]

I’ll keep it short and simple. I prefer the trident for many reasons and especially if you already have an apex.

 

[turbo2oh]

The other thing I’m trying to consider is price and additional hardware.

My understanding is that with the trident I need to buy a DOS to handle the actual alkalinity dosing, and it might require a little bit more fine-tuning in the Apex logic.

My understanding of the Alkatronic is that it can manage alkalinity in a few different ways. It can either use its internal pump to make small corrective doses of alkalinity solution, control a generic peristaltic dosing pump through a controllable outlet (via a Bluetooth outlet), or be paired with the Dosetronic, which obviously increases the overall cost quite a bit.

Is that accurate?

 

[dwest]

The other thing I’m trying to consider is price and additional hardware.

My understanding is that with the trident I need to buy a DOS to handle the actual alkalinity dosing, and it might require a little bit more fine-tuning in the Apex logic.

My understanding of the Alkatronic is that it can manage alkalinity in a few different ways. It can either use its internal pump to make small corrective doses of alkalinity solution, control a generic peristaltic dosing pump through a controllable outlet (via a Bluetooth outlet), or be paired with the Dosetronic, which obviously increases the overall cost quite a bit.

Is that accurate?

I use the alkatronic and have for several years now and recommend it. However, I control alkalinity with a doser and use the alkatronic as a tester. Very infrequently, when I travel, I allow the alkatronic to dose additional alkalinity as required.

 

[areefer01]

The other thing I’m trying to consider is price and additional hardware.

My understanding is that with the trident I need to buy a DOS to handle the actual alkalinity dosing, and it might require a little bit more fine-tuning in the Apex logic.

Yes, if you want to use Trident (ACM) controlled dosing then you will need a DOS. Link below is how it works, and its safety, when using Trident and DOS.

As an aside you can buy the Hanna Alkalinity tester and it takes less than 2 minutes to run. Setup, fill sample tube, and you are more or less done. This way you can get to know your system, patterns, and decide later if you want to splurge on automated water chemistry testing and automation.

https://help.neptunesystems.com/getstarted/trident/tridentdos/

 

[MushroomMan101]

I don’t have experience with both but can say I have a trident and am overall super happy with my results, all test have been spot on with my Hanna checker. A plus I see with the trident is that they have a large user base, any issues I have run into there has already been a reef2reef thread troubleshooting it. I have no experience with Alkatronic and only made the decision to go with the trident have find a good deal on a used unit.

 

[obanarama]

I'll also add that when I added my Trident ACM it absolutely stabilized my system. Weekly manual testing, especially when you are new to the game, like I am/was, was waaaay to infrequent. Things would go sideways before I knew it. Once I could see what was happening every day, or even every few hours, my tank totally snapped into shape.

I will also say that I'm a huge fan of automation, but of course you don't have to use a DOS with the Trident ACM. For example, I use a Red Sea doser and dose Red Sea 4-part, so I check the Trident Alkalinity numbers and adjust my dosing as needed via the Red Sea app - which currently isn't very often.

If you want 100% automation the DOS would be the way to go. But even if you go with the DOS I wouldn't set the Apex up to automate the dosing adjustments immediately. I'd manually set the DOS dosing amounts for awhile until you get it dialed in, then switch it to full automation.

 

[petcellar]

I have a Trident acm. It’s been very good. Once the reagents get below ~15% it acts up a bit. But no problems otherwise. The NP is a different story and highly don’t recommend it.

this

 

[Ecvernon]

I’ve used both. I started off with the Trident and it worked well until it didn’t. I had issues with broken pinch valves. I bought from a member here the pinch valves and started to do my own maintenance. Another reason I didn't like the Trident was because of the reagents and obtaining refills; there was a point in time it was unavailable for a while. I also didn’t like the price of the reagents.

I don’t really value testing calcium and magnesium all that often and really only care about the alkalinity since I dose 2 parts. I got a killer deal on the Alkatronic Pro for around $550 brand new from BRS and gave it a try.

I really like the Alkatronic Pro. Initially I hated it. I had issues with it in the beginning and it was crazy unstable readings. After a few firmware updates and understanding how it works I was able to achieve consistent measurements. The reagent is fairly priced and easy to mix with a digital scale.

I decided to buy a Dosetronic (5 dosing heads vs Apex DOS 2 heads) and I let it control my alkalinity dosing and it’s been working well. The things I don’t like about the Alkatronic Pro is the Pro has a new feature to measure PH. I feel it actually causes errors in my alkalinity testing by leaving too much water in the beaker after a test cycle, that throws off the alkalinity test after that.

It’s useless so I don’t even use it. I would rather have the BNC connected to Apex like the original Alkatronic.
Also the replacement tubings are expensive.

The app for the Focustronic sucks. Sometime when you send commands it doesn’t always go through.
Many many many disconnects from 2.4g dedicated network. I have my Alkatronic and Dosetronic hooked up to apex so I can toggle it off to reset it so that it could connect back to internet.

 

[Ecvernon]

The other thing I’m trying to consider is price and additional hardware.

My understanding is that with the trident I need to buy a DOS to handle the actual alkalinity dosing, and it might require a little bit more fine-tuning in the Apex logic.

My understanding of the Alkatronic is that it can manage alkalinity in a few different ways. It can either use its internal pump to make small corrective doses of alkalinity solution, control a generic peristaltic dosing pump through a controllable outlet (via a Bluetooth outlet), or be paired with the Dosetronic, which obviously increases the overall cost quite a bit.

Is that accurate?

The Alkatronic has a pump built in that can dose alkalinity when it measure too low. If you want to have a third party pump to dose then you would have to purchase a Powertronic to power the pump on or get a Dosetronic.

One time I was on vacation ( had new SPS additions before I left) and my Dosetronic was disconnected from internet. I didn’t have it connected to my Apex to toggle power so that it can reset. The Alkatronic wanted to to a corrective dose but the Dosetronic was not connected to the internet so it did not happen.

I had to toggle the corrective dosing to be handled by the Alkatronic internal dosing pump.

so I learned that I could not completely trust it

 

[winxp_man]

I'll also add that when I added my Trident ACM it absolutely stabilized my system. Weekly manual testing, especially when you are new to the game, like I am/was, was waaaay to infrequent. Things would go sideways before I knew it. Once I could see what was happening every day, or even every few hours, my tank totally snapped into shape.

I will also say that I'm a huge fan of automation, but of course you don't have to use a DOS with the Trident ACM. For example, I use a Red Sea doser and dose Red Sea 4-part, so I check the Trident Alkalinity numbers and adjust my dosing as needed via the Red Sea app - which currently isn't very often.

If you want 100% automation the DOS would be the way to go. But even if you go with the DOS I wouldn't set the Apex up to automate the dosing adjustments immediately. I'd manually set the DOS dosing amounts for awhile until you get it dialed in, then switch it to full automation.

Running same system. Trident with a red sea dosing system and ato. Love it all. And easy to use. I wish I would have bought these systems to begin with. Would have made my life easier.

 

[IPT]

I think a lot of folks don't "trust" the tester to make corrections and have a sperate way to do it. I didn't want the expense of the Trident system and the Alkatronic was too expensive vs the Reef factory KH tester I got on sale.

I dose Kalk via Kamoer doser daily. If my Kalk is a little low I just add some Kalk manually via the doser. In theory Alk and Ca move in tandem so I wouldn't particularly want to dose just Alk solution unless I knew my Ca was where it needed to be. If my Alk is running low hopefully its because consumption is up and thus Ca would be dropping too and Kalk takes care of both.


If I were buying again since Reef Factory is kaput I would go with the Alkatronic system.

 

[turbo2oh]

I'll also add that when I added my Trident ACM it absolutely stabilized my system. Weekly manual testing, especially when you are new to the game, like I am/was, was waaaay to infrequent. Things would go sideways before I knew it. Once I could see what was happening every day, or even every few hours, my tank totally snapped into shape.

I will also say that I'm a huge fan of automation, but of course you don't have to use a DOS with the Trident ACM. For example, I use a Red Sea doser and dose Red Sea 4-part, so I check the Trident Alkalinity numbers and adjust my dosing as needed via the Red Sea app - which currently isn't very often.

If you want 100% automation the DOS would be the way to go. But even if you go with the DOS I wouldn't set the Apex up to automate the dosing adjustments immediately. I'd manually set the DOS dosing amounts for awhile until you get it dialed in, then switch it to full automation.

What made you choose the Red Sea Doser instead of the DOS?