something always failing with the trident

calimako · Apr 11, 2022

i've had mine for 2 years now. when it works and dialed it, it's great. but it is so dang finicky. if you sneeze around it, something will fail.
anyways, i had a heck of a time with test c failing. I finally figured it out. it was a bad batch of c reagent. replaced it, recalibrated it and it fixed it. then low and behold, couple weeks later, did a reagent change and now test b is showing CA 0. finally figured it out as my cuvette was dirty. cleaned it out, recalibrated it and now back on track. But I am realizing the older the unit gets, the more prone it is to failing at something. I am contemplating sending the unit in for maintenance, but so far it is back on track.
any of you guys also experience this?

blaxsun · Apr 11, 2022

I'm only a year in with mine, but I try to clean the cuvette every 6 months. As long as I don't rely on the Trident calibration fluid and use my own test results it remains pretty accurate.

SuncrestReef · Apr 11, 2022

Mine has been rock-solid for almost 3 years now.

Waters · Apr 13, 2022

I also have been using mine for 2+ years with 0 maintenance. My only complaint is the inaccurate CA readings.

FMF0331 · Apr 13, 2022

calimako said:
when it works and dialed it, it's great. but it is so dang finicky. if you sneeze around it, something will fail.

I have a love / hate relationship with this pile of plastic. Like you mention above, the tiniest thing can set this off
( I'm afraid to breath or fart around this thing )
Last night my ALK read 6.5 ( Salifert reading 7.8 )
I try to send my back for yearly maintenance.

elcapitan1993 · Apr 13, 2022

blaxsun said:
I'm only a year in with mine, but I try to clean the cuvette every 6 months. As long as I don't rely on the Trident calibration fluid and use my own test results it remains pretty accurate.

To bad they made it extremely difficult to clean the cuvette, they should have made it to where you can take out the cuvette by taking out two screws in the front or something

blaxsun · Apr 13, 2022

elcapitan1993 said:
To bad they made it extremely difficult to clean the cuvette, they should have made it to where you can take out the cuvette by taking out two screws in the front or something

You won't get any argument from me.

calimako · Apr 13, 2022

i love this thread. misery loves company. so my woes continued as test b and c started to fail again. I think I finally figured it out. The tubing is so finicky that when my reagents are on the tray and tucked into the trident, some of the reagents would not properly fill the cuvette. How did I find this out? I left the cuvette cover off and primed all 4 things, a, b, c, sample to see how they will fill the cuvette. And low and behold, when the tray was tucked into the trident, some of the reagents were not filling the cuvette, even though I swear no lines were kinked. But when I had all the reagents out of the tray and the tubing straight, all the reagents would fill the cuvette fine. After many attempts and reagents wasted, I primed each reagent in the tucked tray so it would successfully fill the cuvette during priming. I had to constantly move the tubing around until I got a good flow in the cuvette during priming. Wow, talk about finicky!

This can explain why tests would fail after I do a reagent change. So moving forward, I will always do this prime test when replacing reagents. And make sure to prime, once the reagents are tucked away in the tray of the trident to ensure they are working properly.

I did waste a lot of reagent, but then I found this

Fully customize Neptune Trident's test schedule

Have you ever wish to have more control on when Trident do its tests? It's not obvious from Fusion UI, but it's actually possible. Trident is simply controlled as couple outputs like other Apex output. It's only a matter of finding those output, then you can program it however you like the same...

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