Trident Reading Low Alk

[reefin_with_the_fam]

R2R Fam! I need help once again! Here's the scoop:
Trident has been seemingly reading low alk (7.62 dkH) and my Hannas (I have an older one and new one I just purchased 3 days ago) both reading about 8.3-8.7.

So I buy new reagent for the trident, and use the included calibration sample, and re-calibrate the trident.

Calibration sample's dkh is 8.3 on the label

Test the sample with both Hannas, one says 8.3, the other 8.5. boom! I think problem solved.

Wrong. Trident takes the tank water sample, back down to 7.58 dkh. I check with both Hannas again, both read 8.3 and 8.7.

I have no idea what to make of this other than the trident is not producing enough reagent to the samples?

As always, your help is appreciated!

 

[((FORDTECH))]

R2R Fam! I need help once again! Here's the scoop:
Trident has been seemingly reading low alk (7.62 dkH) and my Hannas (I have an older one and new one I just purchased 3 days ago) both reading about 8.3-8.7.

So I buy new reagent for the trident, and use the included calibration sample, and re-calibrate the trident.

Calibration sample's dkh is 8.3 on the label

Test the sample with both Hannas, one says 8.3, the other 8.5. boom! I think problem solved.

Wrong. Trident takes the tank water sample, back down to 7.58 dkh. I check with both Hannas again, both read 8.3 and 8.7.

I have no idea what to make of this other than the trident is not producing enough reagent to the samples?

As always, your help is appreciated!

So I’m pretty sure with this situation my trident is not the same as Hannah either and I don’t believe many others is also but what people are doing is taking their Hana testers and measuring their tank and then taking those values and using them as the values to calibrate the trident along with using the actual tank water for the calibration solution instead of Neptunes calibration solution than your calibrating your trident to your Hannah readings of your tank water

 

[((FORDTECH))]

R2R Fam! I need help once again! Here's the scoop:
Trident has been seemingly reading low alk (7.62 dkH) and my Hannas (I have an older one and new one I just purchased 3 days ago) both reading about 8.3-8.7.

So I buy new reagent for the trident, and use the included calibration sample, and re-calibrate the trident.

Calibration sample's dkh is 8.3 on the label

Test the sample with both Hannas, one says 8.3, the other 8.5. boom! I think problem solved.

Wrong. Trident takes the tank water sample, back down to 7.58 dkh. I check with both Hannas again, both read 8.3 and 8.7.

I have no idea what to make of this other than the trident is not producing enough reagent to the samples?

As always, your help is appreciated!

In my life I’m looking more for stability and not actual numbers it can be off .5 to .7 as long as it doesn’t fluctuate more than .1 throughout the day

 

[reefin_with_the_fam]

In my life I’m looking more for stability and not actual numbers it can be off .5 to .7 as long as it doesn’t fluctuate more than .1 throughout the day

And I agree with this sentiment. Im just trying to make sure im not doing something wrong.
I may do what you suggested in your last post and calibrate off of the Hanna instead.

 

[BroccoliFarmer]

So I’m pretty sure with this situation my trident is not the same as Hannah either and I don’t believe many others is also but what people are doing is taking their Hana testers and measuring their tank and then taking those values and using them as the values to calibrate the trident along with using the actual tank water for the calibration solution instead of Neptunes calibration solution than your calibrating your trident to your Hannah readings of your tank water

I am in a similiar but worse situation. I initially calibrated with the provided sample. When I tested the calibration solution with both Hanna AND salifert to confirm the sample and the tank. Immediately after calibrating, the Trident was testing almost .9 below Hanna and Salifert. After getting the canned response from Neptune on 'do the mental math and live with it', I tried to calibrate using tank water. Again, testing the same with both Salifert and Hanna, getting 9.0 and calibrating to 9.0, the immediate test on THE SAME SAMPLE, Trident started testing at 7.2. Again I follow up with Neptune and they are telling me to live with the mental math. Hopefully BRS is willing to swap this out with a functioning unit.

Would love ideas on what I should be doing / saying because this isnt right and I cant get past the neptune gate keepers.

 

[((FORDTECH))]

I am in a similiar but worse situation. I initially calibrated with the provided sample. When I tested the calibration solution with both Hanna AND salifert to confirm the sample and the tank. Immediately after calibrating, the Trident was testing almost .9 below Hanna and Salifert. After getting the canned response from Neptune on 'do the mental math and live with it', I tried to calibrate using tank water. Again, testing the same with both Salifert and Hanna, getting 9.0 and calibrating to 9.0, the immediate test on THE SAME SAMPLE, Trident started testing at 7.2. Again I follow up with Neptune and they are telling me to live with the mental math. Hopefully BRS is willing to swap this out with a functioning unit.

Would love ideas on what I should be doing / saying because this isnt right and I cant get past the neptune gate keepers.

Well first thing Is how long has the trident been running for before you started to try this calibration it’s good to run it at least two or three days to get the fluid moving through the hoses. With that being said the next thing I would check is to make sure that the hoses that go to the region bottles are not kinked in anyway I actually removed the cover from my trident so I can see inside of it when I close the drawer and I make sure that the hoses are routed properly and the way I do it is different from what Neptunes states but I find it to work best this way. It is very strange that if you tested your tank water and then used those values for the calibration values that you would be at 7.2 from a 9.0 that’s way off I’m suspecting something to do with testing error Not a bad unit yet

 

[((FORDTECH))]

I am in a similiar but worse situation. I initially calibrated with the provided sample. When I tested the calibration solution with both Hanna AND salifert to confirm the sample and the tank. Immediately after calibrating, the Trident was testing almost .9 below Hanna and Salifert. After getting the canned response from Neptune on 'do the mental math and live with it', I tried to calibrate using tank water. Again, testing the same with both Salifert and Hanna, getting 9.0 and calibrating to 9.0, the immediate test on THE SAME SAMPLE, Trident started testing at 7.2. Again I follow up with Neptune and they are telling me to live with the mental math. Hopefully BRS is willing to swap this out with a functioning unit.

Would love ideas on what I should be doing / saying because this isnt right and I cant get past the neptune gate keepers.

And I know you don’t wanna hear it but what most of us Trident users are looking for is consistency not the actual number if it says 7.5 for a week straight even though Hannah says eight.5 either way it’s consistently 7.5 or 8.5 meaning stable

 

[BroccoliFarmer]

And I know you don’t wanna hear it but what most of us Trident users are looking for is consistency not the actual number if it says 7.5 for a week straight even though Hannah says eight.5 either way it’s consistently 7.5 or 8.5 meaning stable

Yeah..i get it. My bigger concern here is that I am writing automation scripts based upon alkalinity levels. If my next calibration is off by 1.3 instead of 1.8, I have to recode everything again.

Well first thing Is how long has the trident been running for before you started to try this calibration it’s good to run it at least two or three days to get the fluid moving through the hoses. With that being said the next thing I would check is to make sure that the hoses that go to the region bottles are not kinked in anyway I actually removed the cover from my trident so I can see inside of it when I close the drawer and I make sure that the hoses are routed properly and the way I do it is different from what Neptunes states but I find it to work best this way. It is very strange that if you tested your tank water and then used those values for the calibration values that you would be at 7.2 from a 9.0 that’s way off I’m suspecting something to do with testing error Not a bad unit yet

I agree. Which is the cause of my frustration. Neptune's response of 'do the mental math' leave it open for me inadvertently not doing the testing error and causing problems.

 

[((FORDTECH))]

Yeah..i get it. My bigger concern here is that I am writing automation scripts based upon alkalinity levels. If my next calibration is off by 1.3 instead of 1.8, I have to recode everything again.

I agree. Which is the cause of my frustration. Neptune's response of 'do the mental math' leave it open for me inadvertently not doing the testing error and causing problems.

So for what it’s worth I went thru this over a year ago and back then decided that I would never use the trident dos auto dosing feature due to this. I’m not sure how long you have had trident but it can be dangerous. At the end of regent bottles like the 20% or less range numbers start to drift. If auto dos is used it will start to add or substrate to your set number even tho it’s will be based on testing error. I use the trident readings as information only I do not base my daily dosing on it. My daily dosing is a set number which in 95% of most tanks daily dosing numbers do not change much and imo is safer to stick with and adds more stability then a dos that varies thru the week off of a machine that is not Precise enough for me to trust it

 

[((FORDTECH))]

Yeah..i get it. My bigger concern here is that I am writing automation scripts based upon alkalinity levels. If my next calibration is off by 1.3 instead of 1.8, I have to recode everything again.

I agree. Which is the cause of my frustration. Neptune's response of 'do the mental math' leave it open for me inadvertently not doing the testing error and causing problems.

I have a friend who uses the auto dosing feature and will not listen to me as I explain this to him by the end of the calcium and magnesium reagent bottle his trident has adjusted his alkalinity one point higher than what it actually is due to the numbers being wrong by the time he installs his new reagent bottle and does the calibration now his alkalinity is one point higher than what he wants it and it takes a week or two for it to drop back down it’s all unnecessary and if the dose was set to a specific same amount daily this would never have happened

 

[((FORDTECH))]

Yeah..i get it. My bigger concern here is that I am writing automation scripts based upon alkalinity levels. If my next calibration is off by 1.3 instead of 1.8, I have to recode everything again.

I agree. Which is the cause of my frustration. Neptune's response of 'do the mental math' leave it open for me inadvertently not doing the testing error and causing problems.

The auto dosing feature is a great idea only if they would’ve added some kind of auto calibration procedure to it that say once a week calibrates itself so you know the numbers are good then I would use it

 

[((FORDTECH))]

Hmmm that’s a thought Maybe I just came up with the next idea for neptunes how about a fourth reagent bottle with calibration solution in it that can be automatically used to calibrate on a set schedule. @NeptunePaul I’ll take the bird dog check send it to my email address please for the idea….

 

[BroccoliFarmer]

So for what it’s worth I went thru this over a year ago and back then decided that I would never use the trident dos auto dosing feature due to this. I’m not sure how long you have had trident but it can be dangerous. At the end of regent bottles like the 20% or less range numbers start to drift. If auto dos is used it will start to add or substrate to your set number even tho it’s will be based on testing error. I use the trident readings as information only I do not base my daily dosing on it. My daily dosing is a set number which in 95% of most tanks daily dosing numbers do not change much and imo is safer to stick with and adds more stability then a dos that varies thru the week off of a machine that is not Precise enough for me to trust it

I have a kamoer constant duty set at a low ml per minute rating. When it gets too high, it shuts it off, when it gets too low, it comes back on. I still regularly test with Hanna on a weekly basis and adjust my ml per minute based on weekly consumption. This is just trying to address the highs and lows of growth v non growth periods. Cant say that it has helped much, but my tank fluctuations have been minimal since I have started this approach.

 

[((FORDTECH))]

I have a kamoer constant duty set at a low ml per minute rating. When it gets too high, it shuts it off, when it gets too low, it comes back on. I still regularly test with Hanna on a weekly basis and adjust my ml per minute based on weekly consumption. This is just trying to address the highs and lows of growth v non growth periods. Cant say that it has helped much, but my tank fluctuations have been minimal since I have started this approach.

I almost feel like you would be best off leaving your camor dozer at a constant drip and monitoring trident for a good week watching the trends and then adjusting your daily dose trip according to how your graphs look to the Constant does that you’ve been using

 

[((FORDTECH))]

This eliminates trident adjusting something while using erroneous readings

 

[BroccoliFarmer]

I almost feel like you would be best off leaving your camor dozer at a constant drip and monitoring trident for a good week watching the trends and then adjusting your daily dose trip according to how your graphs look to the Constant does that you’ve been using

In essence, that is what I am trying to do...i am just using the trident more as a failsafe to keep it within a reasonable range just in case something goes haywire.

 

[((FORDTECH))]

In essence, that is what I am trying to do...i am just using the trident more as a failsafe to keep it within a reasonable range just in case something goes haywire.

So how long has trident been running? Was the regents you got with it new and sealed when you installed them ?

 

[((FORDTECH))]

There is definitely bad regents out there sometimes.

 

[BroccoliFarmer]

So how long has trident been running? Was the regents you got with it new and sealed when you installed them ?

Been up and running for about two weeks now. Reagents were sealed..but one of them leaked a little.

 

[((FORDTECH))]

Been up and running for about two weeks now. Reagents were sealed..but one of them leaked a little.

Another thing that is huge during calibration is placement of calibration solution container and hose angle. What I mean by this is they want the bottle close to the spot the line takes water from because the theroy is if any of the hose or the inlet for the hose is in different spot the back pressure could be different causing different amounts of water to be sucked up while calibration. Then when you put the hose back to it’s functional position the backpressure changes now more or less water sucked up changing the readings.
Sorry if you know this already I’m just trying to give you some ideas that I’ve had to deal with