10. Trident Controlled Dosing (w/ATI Essentials Pro)
I wanted to spend some time on this topic because I'm now a big fan of Trident, Trident Controlled Dosing, and ATI Essentials.
Let me start with ATI Essentials Pro, I've been using this for several years and really like it for 2 part with trace elements. One of my goals has been to minimize the amount of water changes I have to do and probably the primary reason I did them in the past was to replenish trace elements. I really like ATI Essentials Pro for this reason as the 2 part contains trace. With that said, I also do ATI ICP OES tests every 4 months and SOME of my trace elements still get depleted but things like strontium and potassium seem to maintain better. Things like bromine, flourine, molybdenum, and manganese seems to always be low so I might dose them separately on occasion but ultimately I like the product.
You get 2 bottles, each 2L which is concentrated. I generally make 2 gallons diluted with RODI and use
these bottles to store and use as my dosing containers. I dose roughly 80ml a day to maintain my parameters which my targets are:
Alk: 8.6
Calcium: 430
Magnesium: 1440
Enter DOS and Trident. I've been using a Trident for almost 2 years, I bought one from the first release from BRS at like 3AM. I love my Trident, it's fantastic and gives me amazing insights into my tank and when I do different things I can see the impact it has on my tank. Up until recently I've always used cheap dosers and don't get me wrong, they work fine. I've had a Jebao doser for a long time and it's never given me issues. Generally I break my dosing up into 4 times a day, so 20ml 4x a day spread out every 6 hours. I never put much thought into dosing more during lights on versus off but then enter Trident and DOS...
I decided I wanted to try out controlled dosing mainly because I'm a nerd and work in IT so automation is something I do everyday. I wanted to share my experience because I've seen a lot of questions about Trident Controlled Dosing recently and some people have a hard time understanding how it works.
1. Baseline - First thing you have to do is establish what the average amount of 2 part you dose each day it takes to maintain your tank. Ballpark, doesn't have to be perfect. Alkalinity is more sensitive and fluctuates quickly so I just used that. ATI Essentials Pro is designed where you dose the same amount of part 1 and part 2, I think most 2 parts are that way. For me it was about 80ml to maintain my Alk. Once a month something may drift a little low or high but 80ml is what I had my doser configured to dose every day. Obviously the Trident comes in handy here because you can just look at your orange graphs and how are your numbers trending? Up/Down, etc. Here is my baseline. Over the period of a week it ranged from 7.6 to 8.3.
2. Trident Controlled Dosing Task - You need a DOS for this part and I want to explain how it works and why.
- Step 2 - When you go through the task it will ask you what parameters you want to control such as Alkalinity, Calcium, or Magnesium but it will show the Trident names like Alkx5, Cax5, Mgx5. Since the DOS only has 2 heads, and I'm using a 2 part that combines Calcium and Magnesium in 1 solution I am just going to control Alkalinity and Calcium.
- Step 3 - Pick the dosing head that corresponds with the parameter you picked in Step 2. For example, in Step 2 I picked Alkx5 so then I picked DOS_4_ALK which is what I named my DOS head used for Alk.
- Step 4 - If you're thinking I was smart in step 3 by naming my DOS head DOS_4_Alk well this is your chance to rename it as the task will give you that option.
- Step 5 - Here is the where the fun begins and confusion kicks in for some. It asks what level you want to maintain and what volume to DOS. This is your baseline that I mentioned above! For me that's 8.6 and I dose 80ml a day currently.
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- Step 6 - You get an option to dose more during the day, less at night which I'll show what that looks like in a minute but I recommend this option. I didn't think it would matter much but I tried it out and like the results which you'll see.
3.
What just happened - That's it for setting up Alk, Calcium is the same process, very straightforward. But what did that actually do behind the scenes and what if something goes wrong?! Lets take a look. On your dashboard click on your DOS or go into your outputs and find the DOS for Alk.
Lets breakdown the graph above and what the task created for you. It created 3 intervals 12AM-7:59AM, 8:00AM-7:59PM, 8PM-11:59PM. Each interval has an amount of Alk to dose to your tank, this goes back to the part where it asks if you want to dose more during the day. You can see here that the 80ml was split into 3 intervals. Over those intervals it might dose a few ml every 15 minutes, not all at once. This next part is important and seems to be where most of the questions come from around preventing disaster.
If you click on one of the gear icons and select "Control Interval" you will see this:
This is the key to everything. You can see my target value of 8.6 with a range of +/-.40. That means as long as my Alkalinity is between 8.2-9.0, the DOS pump will dynamically increase or decrease how much is dosed to my tank. If you don't understand keep reading and stay with me. The limit is +/- 35% which is how much more or less it may dose from your baseline. In my case my baseline was 80ml which means the DOS can dynamically dose between 52-108ml every day based on the Trident readings. That's 35% less than 80ml up to 35% more than 80ml.
So lets go through a few scenarios. My Trident tests and Alk is at 8.3, the DOS will then up the amount dosed throughout the day to try and get you back to your target of 8.6. Keep in mind this is gradual and may even take a couple of days before it gets there. The DOS won't max out at 108ml immediately and cause you to overshoot or spike your Alk.
Another scenario is lets say your Alk goes outside the range of 8.2-9.0. At that point the DOS will revert back to the baseline amount of 80ml and WILL NOT dynamically increase or decrease that amount based on the Trident readings. I've seen this get a few people and they couldn't understand why the controlled dosing wasn't working or maintaining their value. One person tried to set his target to 10 while his current reading was at 8 and expected controlled dosing to gradually raise him to 10. His reading of 8 was outside the range so it just reverted to his baseline amount and was not dynamically adjusting the dosage.
Another reason your baseline is important and something you want to update every now and then as your tank matures is the limit value. Today my alk consumption is 80ml per day but in 6 months if it's up to 120ml per day and I am trying to use controlled dosing with a baseline of 80ml +/- 35% then the max the DOS can dose is 108ml per day. I could see people with falling Alk levels and not understanding why. Just pay attention to how much your DOS is dosing a day and if you notice it getting close to the high or low range consistently, update your baseline ml.
Hopefully that helps someone understand the controlled dosing better. Here is what my readings looked like over the past week using controlled dosing. Min of 8.54 and a max of 8.87, so it's maintaining my Alk very accurately.
Overall I'm a big fan of the Trident controlled dosing and I highly recommend it. If you need any help in setting it up let me know, happy to help.
My only real feedback for Neptune would be to include in the step 7 summary to show that detail around "Alk Range 8.2-9.0", "Min/Max Dose 52-108ml", "Outside of Alk Range dose amount 80ml", etc or maybe even give an option to override the default range and limits. It would also be nice if you select the dose more during the day than at night option that we get an option to put in our light schedule. My lights don't come on until 11AM so it'd be nice if the intervals created matched that. Neither of which are a huge deal but seem like fairly easy enhancements.
