So... I had a tank 'almost crash' about 6 months ago.
- I was preparing for a new tank, moving around stuff on my EB832s, rewiring sensors, shuffling my gear, etc. My C02 feed for my calcium reactor went offline... I noticed but was busy with other stuff and thought it could wait a few days. A few days turned into a week, and my normal Alk went from high eights (8.7 was my target) to low sevens (7.35). I then adjusted back up. While the absolute values aren't way off, the change of 1.35 over ??? hours made some of my delicate 3-4" colonies unhappy.
- LESSON LEARNED: In a tank with rapidly growing healthy colonies of mostly SPS, Alk isn't something you can let slide for a week! (duh!)
- It was the depths of summer, and it was hot. I moved the chiller off the original tank (prepping for the new tank) and ran A/C. My tank temps went to ~83 late afternoon. Hot, but not crazy hot...but I had been running a VERY steady 77.5 - 78F for 18+ months. In the end I realized I had a heater misconfiguration... one of my lower wattage BRS titanium heaters got stuck on due to a misconfiguration on my part. If it was higher wattage it would have raised the temp really high really fast, I would have noticed, and fixed. because I run multiple low wattage, it was just fighting the A/C (and my electric bill was higher than normal!) but was pushing my temps up into the low 80's. DUMB!
- Between these two instabilities I lost some really nice colonies.
- During that instability, I tested my Alk with my Hanna test kit...something I don't routinely do because I was running a trident which checks Alk every 6 hours. When I tested the Alk it was about 0.7 'high' on my Trident. I calibrated and it came back to match (within 0.2) my Hannah test kit. I realized..... oh...THAT'S why they include a calibration bottle with every reagent kit! I sort of blamed my tank crash on the Trident when really it was the C02 mishap + the high temps. In any case I started testing with my Hannah to double check (and even used some old Red Sea test kits to verify).
- In the old/main tank, after all the coral abuse, I was struggling with burnt/algae tips on some really (previously) nice colonies. My corals weren't happy!
- Long story short, I felt/realized that, if I don't calibrate my Trident, it's dangerous to rely on those measurements alone (over months).
- So.. my new tank is in, and I've moved my surviving colonies over after a 5 week cycle and (knock on wood) so far they are recovering. I had purchased a second trident (originally I was going to keep 1 trident on the original tank and 1 trident on the new tank). Because my original tank wasn't happy, I moved all the corals out (except a giant toadstool leather (Sarcophyton) which is happier than ever through all the calamity... and expanded even more now that it's the only thing in a 160G display.
- I've been running two Tritons on my new build, and below you can see them measure against each other. While I will still ABSOLUTELY calibrate with every new reagent bottle, this has reinforced my trust in the Trident. Good work Neptune Systems. Alk doesn't deviate by more than 0.05 or so.
