Triton Additives Concentration Values (mg/litre)

[Want2BS8ed]

Gp, this is a good point and I don't think any of us meant to do harm to the Triton Co.

But we really did not reverse engineer anything. I never took their solutions into the lab to titrate and find out what the concentration was. We are only using the information that Triton makes publically available. Last year at MACNA Triton's founder, Ehsan Dashti, gave an excellent talk. It is available on the BRS WebSite. It in he mentions that the Triton test is designed to give the hobbyist power. We know what is in our tanks, and what is missing and we make adjustments based on that knowledge. It was that talk that convinced me that water-changes are overrated and I have reduced them with excellent results since last fall. I highly recommend everyone interested watch that video.

So I do not think we are bound to buy Triton products outside of the test kits. I think Triton offers them for convenience. I do not use Core7, but I understand some find it convenient. I make most of my own supplements, but I have found Vanadium expensive and difficult to source, so I use Triton's V supplement. I look at it like this: I like to cook at home because it is fun and I get to play as a chemist in the kitchen. Some people prefer to go out to dinner, not have the odors and avoid all of the clean-up. Of course, you pay for that convenience, but all decisions are not about money. There will always be some who find measuring mg of reagents and calculating dosages too difficult, so they will go with the prefab solutions. There will be those, like me, who like to play in the lab, and have a degree in chemistry. It is a fun part of the hobby to figure out what concentration of various elements makes my corals grow better and show better color. I never meant to take business away from Triton, and I apologize if anyone from the company finds that this thread does so. At the same time, Ehsan Dashti did claim to give the power to the hobbyist in his talk.

That is a well thought out and reasoned response. Good on you!

M

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

@ReefTeacher and @Gp! both make good points.

In an effort to find some middle ground, it's not really necessary to calculate the concentration of Triton's solutions and mimic them. You can calculate how much of any supplement is needed if you have a few pieces of information. You just need to know the concentration of the dosing solution, the concentration of your tank, and the concentration you want your tank to be.

K (potassium) is a good example of this. @Jonty posted that their 1,700L tank is at a concentration of 355 mg/L. We know what the tank should be, and that's 400 mg/L. Now we just need a K supplement of a known strength. According to Jonty, the Brightwell K powder increases the K by 129 mg/L per gallon for every gram added. So, if we add a random 273g of this poweder to 1 gallon of deionized water, we now have a solution that is around 35,000 mg/L.

Using a simple formula like the one I described previously, we can calculate how much of this arbitrary solution Jonty would need to raise K from 355 mg/L to 400 mg/L:

So in Jonty's case, that would be:

(1,700 * (355 - 400)) / (400 - 35,000) = Dv

Dv = 2.210 L, or 2,210 mL

Of course, this dose will change based on the strength of the solution you make. But this can be done with any supplement of any concentration. You just need the tank's volume in liters, the concentration of the tank and the dosing solutions. The concentrations must all be the same unit too.. mg/L, ppm, g/L, etc... doesn't matter as long as they're all the same. Just remember the result will be in liters, so you need to multiply by one thousand to get the dose in mL.

 

[jzw]

correction to the manganese research, aka saved by the chemist:

triton manganese (US$32 for 100mℓ)
100,000 µg/ℓ

ati manganese (US$15 for 100mℓ)
200,000 µg/ℓ

 

[ReefTeacher]

@ReefTeacher and @Gp! both make good points.

In an effort to find some middle ground, it's not really necessary to calculate the concentration of Triton's solutions and mimic them. You can calculate how much of any supplement is needed if you have a few pieces of information. You just need to know the concentration of the dosing solution, the concentration of your tank, and the concentration you want your tank to be.

K (potassium) is a good example of this. @Jonty posted that their 1,700L tank is at a concentration of 355 mg/L. We know what the tank should be, and that's 400 mg/L. Now we just need a K supplement of a known strength. According to Jonty, the Brightwell K powder increases the K by 129 mg/L per gallon for every gram added. So, if we add a random 273g of this poweder to 1 gallon of deionized water, we now have a solution that is around 35,000 mg/L.

Using a simple formula like the one I described previously, we can calculate how much of this arbitrary solution Jonty would need to raise K from 355 mg/L to 400 mg/L:

So in Jonty's case, that would be:

(1,700 * (355 - 400)) / (400 - 35,000) = Dv

Dv = 2.210 L, or 2,210 mL

Of course, this dose will change based on the strength of the solution you make. But this can be done with any supplement of any concentration. You just need the tank's volume in liters, the concentration of the tank and the dosing solutions. The concentrations must all be the same unit too.. mg/L, ppm, g/L, etc... doesn't matter as long as they're all the same. Just remember the result will be in liters, so you need to multiply by one thousand to get the dose in mL.

Chipmonk,

of course, you are correct. But the difficulty is in starting with an ionic solid that contains an anion (or cation) that we must account for. If we use KCl for potassium source, it is only 52.3% Potassium; we ignore the chloride as there is so much of it in our tank. It is knowing how much reagent we dissolve in each liter (or gallon) of water that is the tricky part. Once you know how to make a solution of known concentration, your formula works. But taking hydration states into account and knowing how much each individual reagent delivers for the desired ion requires a bit more chemistry.

BTW, the Brightwell K powder seems to have a percentage between KCl and KSO4. So I don't know if it is some mix of the two or just KCl with some anticaking agent added. But 1 gram of KCl would deliver 137 mg/L per gallon of Potassium. So there is something slightly diluting it!

 

[jzw]

omg rt! lol!

 

[ReefTeacher]

hey @ReefTeacher, re this strontium calc, you mean 8,000 mg/l, correct?

Sorry! YES! I meant to type 8 g/L which is 8000 mg/L

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

Chipmonk,

of course, you are correct. But the difficulty is in starting with an ionic solid that contains an anion (or cation) that we must account for. If we use KCl for potassium source, it is only 52.3% Potassium; we ignore the chloride as there is so much of it in our tank. It is knowing how much reagent we dissolve in each liter (or gallon) of water that is the tricky part. Once you know how to make a solution of known concentration, your formula works. But taking hydration states into account and knowing how much each individual reagent delivers for the desired ion requires a bit more chemistry.

BTW, the Brightwell K powder seems to have a percentage between KCl and KSO4. So I don't know if it is some mix of the two or just KCl with some anticaking agent added. But 1 gram of KCl would deliver 137 mg/L per gallon of Potassium. So there is something slightly diluting it!

Why are Brightwell's instructions not sufficient for creating a solution of known concentration? Brightwell says adding 1 gram to a gallon raises K by 129 mg/L. If that's not correct, then it's not correct for the Triton mimic solution we calculated earlier. Both making Triton mimics and making your own solutions of arbitrary concentration require knowing how to make solutions properly. If you're claiming we can't make solutions of an arbitrary concentration because the directions can't be trusted, then we can't make a solution of a specific concentration to mimic Triton's products either.

 

[jzw]

hey guys, that's why i would totally go for products in liquid form, would it be easier?

separately, i object to the term 'mimic.' no one has a propietary rights over periodic table elements, or sea water for that matter... and of course i think it empowers us reefer to investigate the different products available.

 

[Gp!]

sorry @Gp!, but sometimes triton stuff is not in stock. like when i tired to buy triton manganese. and look at all the posts pleading where to buy core7.

..snip...

we're all consumers, spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars... over the lives of our tanks. we have a right to know what we're buying. triton has the option to publish a content/concentration list. i appreciate companies that disclose info useful to its customers. those that haven't, well, it results in time-wasting, reverse-engineering research threads like this. i agree this thread may be in-your-face unslightly, and in fact some participants have already been driven underground. i encourage us to discuss this publicly, without shame, because...

it's not reasonable to buy a car without knowing its size or mileage. or buy a house without knowing the # of rooms or square footage. customers compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. if a supermarket priced apples as $1.00 per mystery weight, who'd shop there?

the triton method is undoubtedly a great approach, that's why we're all here. way to go, triton!
...snip...

So you're free to do as you please. I certainly don't make any money from trition products. But you're rationalizing and your analogies are not really parallel. It's closer to decompiling a binary protected by a serial key and reverse engineering the protection scheme and then posting an algorithm for the layman to use to generate a fake serial key that grants access to the software - I'm sure we can all agree that is wrong.

Just because you have money invented in a project doesn't give you the "right" to know something. Private business has an obligation to make money for their investors are you certainly don't have a right to know private information that isn't mandated by law to be shared. You have the right not to buy their products - free will - and anything granted to you by law.

Gp, this is a good point and I don't think any of us meant to do harm to the Triton Co.

But we really did not reverse engineer anything. I never took their solutions into the lab to titrate and find out what the concentration was. We are only using the information that Triton makes publically available.

Fair enough. Just wanted to share my reaction to the posts.

Last year at MACNA Triton's founder, Ehsan Dashti, gave an excellent talk. It is available on the BRS WebSite. It in he mentions that the Triton test is designed to give the hobbyist power. We know what is in our tanks, and what is missing and we make adjustments based on that knowledge.

.. snip..

So I do not think we are bound to buy Triton products outside of the test kits.

..snip..
At the same time, Ehsan Dashti did claim to give the power to the hobbyist in his talk.

Fair enough. I certainly don't know Ehsan Dashti personally and couldn't speculate to his true meaning. But I would be shocked if he meant that he was okay to post how to duplicate his product- but that certainly doesn't mean he didn't.

In an effort to find some middle ground, it's not really necessary to calculate the concentration of Triton's solutions and mimic them. You can calculate how much of any supplement is needed if you have a few pieces of information. You just need to know the concentration of the dosing solution, the concentration of your tank, and the concentration you want your tank to be.

Well said. From the information provided - especially hearing the Triton Founder's intentions - if that is still a current view - it seems like this would be good by everyone and still satisfy the needs of those that are unable to acquire the Core7 during shortages

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

hey guys, that's why i would totally go for products in liquid form, would it be easier?

separately, i object to the term 'mimic.' no one has a propietary rights over periodic table elements, or sea water for that matter... and of course i think it empowers us reefer to investigate the different products available.

If a liquid additive that has a stated concentration of X mg/L is more convenient, that would absolutely work also. You just have to plug in the numbers and do the math to get the correct dose based on the solution's concentration.

I think that mimic was a fair way to describe what is going on here. Obviously Triton does not own the rights to make potassium solutions at concentrations of 84,000 mg/L. I absolutely do not mean "steal" when I say mimic. I just mean to say that this thread's aim appears to be, in part, to make concentrations that are very close to Triton's own solutions. The reason that the posters in this thread wanted to do this is so they could dose exactly what the Triton directions say, but with their DIY solutions, and achieve the same results. I don't think that mimic is an inaccurate way to describe that. It was not meant in a derogatory way.

 

[ReefTeacher]

Why are Brightwell's instructions not sufficient for creating a solution of known concentration? Brightwell says adding 1 gram to a gallon raises K by 129 mg/L. If that's not correct, then it's not correct for the Triton mimic solution we calculated earlier. Both making Triton mimics and making your own solutions of arbitrary concentration require knowing how to make solutions properly. If you're claiming we can't make solutions of an arbitrary concentration because the directions can't be trusted, then we can't make a solution of a specific concentration to mimic Triton's products either.

Chipmunk, I don't think I said directions can't be trusted, nor that we can't make solutions of any concentration we would like, within the rules of solubility, of course. Brightwell does give clear directions about the potassium additive they market, and it is easy to find for some other elements as well. But many additives are not commercially available with such clear instructions. I may not know the market well enough, but are there known compositions of Zinc, Manganese, and Nickel available? My last Triton analysis gave directions on dosing all three with their solutions. I had some of these on hand from my days of using the Balling plus method. But now I have the Triton test to help me know how to shape my dose. The Balling plus method just used ratios based on Calcium consumption. I think the ICP-OES is an excellent contributions to the hobby and I will support Triton for it.

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

Chipmunk, I don't think I said directions can't be trusted, nor that we can't make solutions of any concentration we would like, within the rules of solubility, of course. Brightwell does give clear directions about the potassium additive they market, and it is easy to find for some other elements as well. But many additives are not commercially available with such clear instructions. I may not know the market well enough, but are there known compositions of Zinc, Manganese, and Nickel available? My last Triton analysis gave directions on dosing all three with their solutions. I had some of these on hand from my days of using the Balling plus method. But now I have the Triton test to help me know how to shape my dose. The Balling plus method just used ratios based on Calcium consumption. I think the ICP-OES is an excellent contributions to the hobby and I will support Triton for it.

That's true, for elements that are not from an aquarium vendor, it's tricky to calculate the hydration and relative concentrations. I was just confused because up until this point, we haven't discussed any of those. We were discussing supplements for which there are very clear instruction for aquarium use.

 

[jzw]

 

[jzw]

hey @Gp! just curious, did you finish your 900 - 1,200 gal build, and are you running exclusively triton products?

i have a 600ish system and i'm wondering what an exclusively triton core7 and triton additives system costs, without doing any cost saving measures contained in this thread. i use 10 litre jugs of core7, and some of the triton additives.

 

[ItsAName]

It would be even cheaper still to buy a pound of Potassium chloride. this is 52% Potassium so we would need only 150 g/L to make up the required solution. Alphachemicals has this for less that $3/lb. I believe it is agricultural grade.

This was just calculated on another thread too. It came out to 148g/L to 150g/L. Math checks out. This one is solved!

 

[Charterreefer]

Ehsan Dashti brought an excellent product to the market. It's a powerful tool. It tells us the levels that our individual systems are at. I think of it as a test kit. Just like any other test kit. The reefkeeper can then calculate how much of a SIMPLE chemical is needed, then make up a stock solution to achieve this. Isn't that one of the fun parts of this hobby?!! Isn't that what we always did for PO4 and NO3 to attain the required levels, using our test kit and then making stock solutions of say Potassium nitrate and Phosphorus? Let's not forget that this hobby evolved from "do it yourselfers." That is where it was born. That is the culture. It requires a certain type of person who is knowledgeable with some basic chemistry skills, a handy person able to work with acrylics, metal, wood, glass, etc. ..and lots of PATIENCE. This is where many people get a lot of satisfaction in this hobby. That's what this was and is to many people still. Although, today you can buy just about everything you need, just write a check (if you could buy experience they would be writing out checks for that too )! Let them buy all the over priced additives, etc they want. But for the rest of us let's continue to do what we do. Triton is a test kit and we need to come up with calculators like Randy and others have come up with and published for the other chemical levels we are now able to measure. Triton is not the only icp-oes test out there and I'm sure that others will be here soon driving down the price! They made their killing while they could. Let's get back to keeping it real folks!

 

[Want2BS8ed]

Triton is not the only icp-oes test out there and I'm sure that others will be here soon driving down the price! They made there killing while they could. Let's get back to keeping it real folks!

Oh, there already are not only for the testing but the various elements Triton offers.

As someone else mentioned, the periodic table and NSW are not proprietary. Triton is now no better than IBM in the 80's - "we will continue to tell our customers what they will get... while our competition passes us by"

Charterreefer, you are spot on this has always been a DIY hobby. Often times the journey of learning is more rewarding than the destination and even if something is available and used out of convenience I still appreciate the understanding of what's behind it.

 

[Charterreefer]

Oh, there already are not only for the testing but the various elements Triton offers.

As someone else mentioned, the periodic table and NSW are not proprietary. Triton is now no better than IBM in the 80's - "we will continue to tell our customers what they will get... while our competition passes us by"

Charterreefer, you are spot on this has always been a DIY hobby. Often times the journey of learning is more rewarding than the destination and even if something is available and used out of convenience I still appreciate the understanding of what's behind it.

Thank You!

 

[Gp!]

hey @Gp! just curious, did you finish your 900 - 1,200 gal build, and are you running exclusively triton products?

i have a 600ish system and i'm wondering what an exclusively triton core7 and triton additives system costs, without doing any cost saving measures contained in this thread. i use 10 litre jugs of core7, and some of the triton additives.

In progress but not to a point for those numbers yet -- will be happy to share when I am

 

[Lasse]

What everyone missing is that the Triton system is a complete system with inbuild checkpoints. If you use Core 7 you will also add trace elements in amount that compensates for ideal consumption. In the long run – this mean that the dosing of separate chemicals will be avoided. As everyone know – there is nothing in this world that stay ideal, hence the need of checkpoints – the ICP tests. In order to help customer – Triton give recommendation based on their stock solutions. This is holistic solution that will follow if you use their whole system

If you – as I – do not use the Core 7 or its technical twin – calcium reactor – you have to relay on two or three parts Balling.

In the long run – I need to compensate with trace elements more often and more of them each time. The need of chemicals will be there – if I use Triton system full out – I do not normally need to add large amount of trace elements and other needed substances.

I do not run a full Triton System and I am able to do simple math and calculate what I shall put in and why. However – I will in the future convert to a full system – Triton other methods – just in order to not use as many dosing pumps as I do today.

Sincerely Lasse