Trident Testing question

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jlts21

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Has anybody else noticed or read about an potential issue with the Trident testing? I run my tank on the higher side (alk 10, cal 465, mg 1500) and I have noticed that at noon my cal is 468 and at midnight it is 486. It has been like this for the past week (was set up November 18th). I have not been dosing for the past 1-1.5 weeks so I am not sure what is going on. I manually tested before setting up and everything was spot on so I continued dosing manually and was going to wait to set up automatic dosing until I knew the Trident was consistent and accurate. If I am not dosing, I do not understand why the cal would be fluctuating that much while alk has steady and very slowly been declining (was 9.95 dkh on 11/29 and is now 9.15)
 
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jlts21

jlts21

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Interesting....
It is very interesting. I know of one other person on the forum that had the exact same issue although their cal fluctuated 50ppm consistently between noon and midnight without dosing as opposed to my 20ppm. I'm not sure if there is an issue with the trident needing calibrated after initially being setup, but I was under the impression that calibrating is not necessary. And with all the corals I have, I would think that dosing would be needed as what was done in the past, but the cal has not dropped at all (even with a consistent fluctuation. it has been 468 at noon and 486 at midnight for past week. Hopefully @Terence can provide some information
 
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How many times a day are you testing or what is the schedule?
Are there any lights in the location of the Trident that come on at night (fuge light) light spill?

I've not seen that issue. I've seen an issue with my CA climbing and not leveling out but it was due to my CA reagent being low and me thinking it was more so ignoring the % left.
 
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jlts21

jlts21

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How many times a day are you testing or what is the schedule?
Are there any lights in the location of the Trident that come on at night (fuge light) light spill?

I've not seen that issue. I've seen an issue with my CA climbing and not leveling out but it was due to my CA reagent being low and me thinking it was more so ignoring the % left.
I am doing the minimum testing (4,2,2). No lights/light spill at night (midnight) as lights go off at 8:30. Trident is on an end table next to my tank so the only light spill, if any, would be during the day. But it sits quite a bit lower that the tank so I don't think there is any light spill to it. I didn't think about that being a potential issue so I'm glad you brought that up. I decided to place it where it is so that I don't have to climb underneath the tank to change out reagants. I'll attach a couple pictures that I took after setting it up (with and without the flash). Pictures were taken at around 5pm (in Ohio so it gets dark rather soon this time of year)

**EDIT** My mag has also been slowly increasing and I haven't dosed anything for the past 1-1.5 weeks
AE4292EE-986A-4F52-A69D-D352B2A3A980.jpeg
24D77DD9-C9C2-4833-8241-8B7E0D02574B.jpeg
 
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Jash1k

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If your not seeing any swings and corals look like they are growing and happy then its all good.
 
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If your not seeing any swings and corals look like they are growing and happy then its all good.
No swings other than the 20ppm for cal and that mag has slowly been increasing while alk has slowly declined. I just wish I could figure out the issue and resolve it so I know for dosing and so I can start automatic dosing. If the cal is showing high at midnight when it really isn't then the it won't trigger the DOS to dose what it needs. Or on the flip side, if it is showing low at noon and it really isn't and it adds then it would over-dose the tank
 
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I am doing the minimum testing (4,2,2). No lights/light spill at night (midnight) as lights go off at 8:30. Trident is on an end table next to my tank so the only light spill, if any, would be during the day. But it sits quite a bit lower that the tank so I don't think there is any light spill to it. I didn't think about that being a potential issue so I'm glad you brought that up. I decided to place it where it is so that I don't have to climb underneath the tank to change out reagants. I'll attach a couple pictures that I took after setting it up (with and without the flash). Pictures were taken at around 5pm (in Ohio so it gets dark rather soon this time of year)

**EDIT** My mag has also been slowly increasing and I haven't dosed anything for the past 1-1.5 weeks
AE4292EE-986A-4F52-A69D-D352B2A3A980.jpeg
24D77DD9-C9C2-4833-8241-8B7E0D02574B.jpeg

Got it, thanks. I am also using the 4/2/2 schedule. The only other thing I could suggest is to manually run a test at the same time as the Trident and see how it compares. It is sort of hard to tell with so few samples being run and how the graphs are generated and displayed.

If you look at the dashboard you see a pretty straight and narrow graphs. On the other hand if you zero in on say the CA and display that you see the peaks and valley's. Have you asked Neptune yet?
 
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jlts21

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Got it, thanks. I am also using the 4/2/2 schedule. The only other thing I could suggest is to manually run a test at the same time as the Trident and see how it compares. It is sort of hard to tell with so few samples being run and how the graphs are generated and displayed.

If you look at the dashboard you see a pretty straight and narrow graphs. On the other hand if you zero in on say the CA and display that you see the peaks and valley's. Have you asked Neptune yet?
I have not, I do plan on it though. I just wanted to see if anybody else was having a similar issue and if so, what the possible issue was. I also contemplated manually testing with me hanna checker to see if the tank really is fluctuating at noon and midnight, but makes it hard to test at noon when I'm working and midnight when I'm sleeping. May have to suck it up on saturday/saturday night and stay up to test it.
Also contemplated running more tests for a couple days and see if I can pinpoint it (rather than thinking its just rising steadily between noon and midnight and declining steadily between midnight and noon
 
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I do want to add that I just check the app and it seems like it may be leveling out after the test from last night
470 - noon 12/4
469 - midnight 12/5
469 - noon 12/5
We’ll see after midnight tonight
1F5900C8-A665-40CD-9E68-0459D698CD73.jpeg
 

Hogan

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My calc test was bouncing around approximately 100 ppm and it was always at the same time of day when the test would go wacko (for me it was in the afternoon). I asked my LFS (who does maintenance on hundreds of tanks in our valley and many with Tritons) if they'd seen anything like that. They said they've noticed it's extremely sensitive to micro bubbles. Even though it doesn't look like there are any bubbles, micro ones that you can't see will mess with the test and give you bogus readings. Also, I was dosing and testing from the same chamber in the sump. As both are on a schedule, I thought it was possible that it a test was lining up soon after it had dosed or some of the dosing medium was getting stuck in a pocket in the sump and that was messing with the test. So, I moved the intake line to a calmer water area in the sump where it wasn't dosing and that fixed the problem for me.
 
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jlts21

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My calc test was bouncing around approximately 100 ppm and it was always at the same time of day when the test would go wacko (for me it was in the afternoon). I asked my LFS (who does maintenance on hundreds of tanks in our valley and many with Tritons) if they'd seen anything like that. They said they've noticed it's extremely sensitive to micro bubbles. Even though it doesn't look like there are any bubbles, micro ones that you can't see will mess with the test and give you bogus readings. Also, I was dosing and testing from the same chamber in the sump. As both are on a schedule, I thought it was possible that it a test was lining up soon after it had dosed or some of the dosing medium was getting stuck in a pocket in the sump and that was messing with the test. So, I moved the intake line to a calmer water area in the sump where it wasn't dosing and that fixed the problem for me.
hmm that's good to know and could be the issue maybe. I have the intake in one of my overflow boxes (old school black ones inside tank with bottom drilled). And while the level in the box is never low enough to create the waterfall effect I guess there could still be bubbles. Doesn't make sense though that it is consistently fluctuating between noon and midnight. I would think that if micro bubbles are the issue it would fluctuate inconsistently as the water level never changes
 

Thales

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Has anybody else noticed or read about an potential issue with the Trident testing? I run my tank on the higher side (alk 10, cal 465, mg 1500) and I have noticed that at noon my cal is 468 and at midnight it is 486. It has been like this for the past week (was set up November 18th). I have not been dosing for the past 1-1.5 weeks so I am not sure what is going on. I manually tested before setting up and everything was spot on so I continued dosing manually and was going to wait to set up automatic dosing until I knew the Trident was consistent and accurate. If I am not dosing, I do not understand why the cal would be fluctuating that much while alk has steady and very slowly been declining (was 9.95 dkh on 11/29 and is now 9.15)
Those drifts seem to be very small and within the stated precision of the test.
 

SuncrestReef

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No swings other than the 20ppm for cal and that mag has slowly been increasing while alk has slowly declined. I just wish I could figure out the issue and resolve it so I know for dosing and so I can start automatic dosing. If the cal is showing high at midnight when it really isn't then the it won't trigger the DOS to dose what it needs. Or on the flip side, if it is showing low at noon and it really isn't and it adds then it would over-dose the tank

Keep in mind the Trident has a +/- 15 ppm margin of error on cal and mag, and +/- 0.05 dKH on alk.
 
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jlts21

jlts21

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Those drifts seem to be very small and within the stated precision of the test.
Keep in mind the Trident has a +/- 15 ppm margin of error on cal and mag, and +/- 0.05 dKH on alk.
But would it fluctuate consistently like what I am dealing with? I just seems like an issue with it being 20ppm higher at midnight than it is at noon. I'm no genius, but I would think that that +/- 15ppm margin would show a "less consistent" fluctuation with the time of test having zero merit to the fluctuation?
 

Thales

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The alk going down may just be an increase in use.
 

Thales

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But would it fluctuate consistently like what I am dealing with? I just seems like an issue with it being 20ppm higher at midnight than it is at noon. I'm no genius, but I would think that that +/- 15ppm margin would show a "less consistent" fluctuation with the time of test having zero merit to the fluctuation?
Can you post some graphs so we know we are on the same page? Thanks
 

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Here is mine from the last day not at all worried
01CB6C76-00EC-4973-814A-18B50C0A2506.png
 
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jlts21

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Can you post some graphs so we know we are on the same page? Thanks
I have one posted showing the past week. Here is the past day for cal and alk. I’m not at all worried about the alk as it has been consistent and spot on with my Hanna checker. It’s the fluctuation of cal that I want to make sure isn’t an issue
57CFE500-AE8F-4CE9-A99C-6D0235A9E54C.png
 

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i recently purchased and setup my trident. I know exactly what you mean . What i did was after the 3rd morning i manually tested everything with Red Sea Test Kit and compared all my results to the Trident. My Calcium was WAYYY high on the trident in the trident as it had been and magnesium was showing a bit low. Alkalinity was showing an entire PPM the it actually was. upon calibration which took about an hour to get the actual numbers on the bottle, i then ran a secondary test on my sump water and all my parameters tested within range fo my manual kit. SO in SHORT CALIBRATE, hope that helps.
 
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