Lab water test?
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Randy Holmes-Farley
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Has it?
To get into business, they recently took over AWT which doesn't have a very good reputation.
An alternative to Triton is
www.enclabs.com
mcarroll
10K Club member
Randy, if you have actual experience with them please share. I do have experience with them, quite a bit - and all I was doing was sharing it.
Your FUD regarding their service is predictable but not understandable since I've never heard of you using them.
Your FUD regarding their service is predictable but not understandable since I've never heard of you using them.
Randy Holmes-Farley
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I've never used AWT because they had such a poor reputation.
Specifically, they always seem to report low potassium, and calcium often seemed low, with a unexplained reporting of "ionic" calcium as a different number, which makes no sense to me.
Jason recently compared them to Triton and various kits here:
Triton vs. Aquamedic AWT vs. Hobbyist kits API Salifert Elos RedSea Hanna etc
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ts-api-salifert-elos-redsea-hanna-etc.222909/
I'll just copy and paste some of his results and hopefully he won't mind. In these selected results, AWT didn't give the same result as Triton and in some cases, other kits:
Calcium:
440 (API)
450 (Salifert)
410 (AWT)
448 (Triton)
Phosphates:
0.018ppm (Hanna 736 ULR Converted from 6 ppb Phosphorous) tested twice
< 0.024ppm (Elos Pro)
0.21ppm (AWT)
0.024ppm (Triton converted from 7.75ppb Phosphorous)
Potassium
363 (AWT)
395.8 (Triton)
Silicon
0.37352 mg/L (AWT converted from .8mg/L of Silica if I converted right)
0.06732 mg/L (Triton 67.32ug/L)
Molybdenum
0.4mg/L (AWT)
0.00241 (Triton 2.41ug/l)
Salinity:
34 (Veegee/Vitalsine refractometer)
34.4 (Apex)
36 (Milwaukee Digital)
31.9 (AWT roughly converted from 1.024)
33.96 (Triton calculated with an assumption of F and alk/temp from my readings)
mcarroll
10K Club member
Thanks...so much better than the FUD post. You are actually the only person I've ever heard speak negatively of them. My experiences were consistently good, so perhaps I never read around very much.
I'm still not sure I see the logic of your complaint.
Do you expect all of those different tests to give identical results for some reason?
I'm not aware that we have ever been under that kind of assumption - if anything, the opposite.
To my knowledge you have to be running the same test to have directly comparable results. Is that completely wrong?
I thought this variance was natural and pretty much dictated by interferences to counting calcium ions and the different methods for dealing with that in seawater.
I'm still not sure I see the logic of your complaint.
Do you expect all of those different tests to give identical results for some reason?
I'm not aware that we have ever been under that kind of assumption - if anything, the opposite.
To my knowledge you have to be running the same test to have directly comparable results. Is that completely wrong?
I thought this variance was natural and pretty much dictated by interferences to counting calcium ions and the different methods for dealing with that in seawater.
Ryengoth
I wish I was in St John USVI
Ask your LFS to participate in this : http://thriveaquatics.com/products/thrive-waterlab.html
Randy Holmes-Farley
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There were lots of threads in the Reef Chemistry forum at RC, at least when I was there. Some date back a number of years so no longer may be relevant, but there have been issues discussed.
Randy Holmes-Farley
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They have a history of giving low potassium and calcium readings, and in this recent case they were again lower than other methods. Which is accurate? Of course I cannot know with any certainty, but I tend to have more confidence in Triton for these than AWT, since I have seen standards run at Triton for these and they were pretty accurate for potassium and calcium:
http://packedhead.net/2015/triton-lab-icp-oes-testing-of-a-certified-artificial-saltwater-standard/
So let's look at phosphate:
Phosphates:
0.018ppm (Hanna 736 ULR Converted from 6 ppb Phosphorous) tested twice
< 0.024ppm (Elos Pro)
0.21ppm (AWT)
0.024ppm (Triton converted from 7.75ppb Phosphorous)
So we have three tests widely used by reefers that show pretty low values and one is 10x higher. AWT. I think the fact that these three tests gave one answer and AWT gave a divergent answer seems concerning.
Here's some additional history. In a widely published salt mix study, near every salt mix was low in potassium. Some had barely more than half of normal. No other study ever showed that and it seems extraordinarily unlikely:
http://reefsaltanalysis.googlepages.com/AWT_Salt_Analysis_0208.pdf
These are the sorts of results that make me concerned.
I haven't said that any of their recent results are wrong, but I would not treat it as a definitive result.
http://uniquecorals.com/dry-goods/triton/triton-labs-reef-aquarium-water-test-single-test-vials.html
Unique corals is the US vendor for Triton testing. I suggest getting good test kits and then sending in a Triton test 4 times a year to verify your testing.
twilliard
Tank pests..
Here is my take on Triton
When I started i had a lot of heavy metals going on amongst other things.
As I progressed with Triton monthly I kept a curve log of my results.
To the day (test kit on the way) what I look for is consistency of my values.
Do I take each individual test as a holy grail? No
Do I look at trends.. yes
When I started i had a lot of heavy metals going on amongst other things.
As I progressed with Triton monthly I kept a curve log of my results.
To the day (test kit on the way) what I look for is consistency of my values.
Do I take each individual test as a holy grail? No
Do I look at trends.. yes
mcarroll
10K Club member
And again I guess I don't know which is more accurate, but I do know AWT has been consistent and that there are at least a dozen large tanks that I can go see today that are being maintained off the results of these tests.
I'll grant you nobody is monitoring or dosing for potassium or any of the more esoteric elements on these tanks (they do adjust water changes and feedings on the results) but the tanks look good and are successful.
On top of that they really improved their online experience in the last few years . (I.e. there is one)
I'm not recommending them over any other service, btw...but I'm not recommending any other service over them either. My experiences have been good.
And FWIW, I would not expect all services to give equivalent results, but they'd better be consistent. I can speak as to my experiences with one of them.
I'll grant you nobody is monitoring or dosing for potassium or any of the more esoteric elements on these tanks (they do adjust water changes and feedings on the results) but the tanks look good and are successful.
On top of that they really improved their online experience in the last few years . (I.e. there is one
)I'm not recommending them over any other service, btw...but I'm not recommending any other service over them either. My experiences have been good.
And FWIW, I would not expect all services to give equivalent results, but they'd better be consistent. I can speak as to my experiences with one of them.
ritter6788
Coral Fraud Private Eye
