Trident calcium

[Sean Clark]

I am wondering if there’s been an issue with their calibration solution due to pandemic sourcing issues? It seemed to start after that for me when the reagents became hard to find.

I have a feeling that it has more to due with the Ca and Mg reagents. They will calibrate to what you tell them, and seem accurate for a while. Then the readings start to drift as the reagents get older. Alk doesn't seem to suffer from the same problem.

In my experience, the longer it has been since the reagent has been changed, the less time it will hold calibration. Also the further the results will be off.

Right now my Trident is reporting Ca over 100ppm low... Frustrating.

 

[blaxsun]

Well, I’m set to run some titration tests later tonight - so I’ll find out how much Kh, Ca and Mg have drifted (if at all) over the past few weeks.

 

[blaxsun]

So after running various tests this evening, I was able to determine that my Ca has remained about the same (±0ppm variance), KH was off (7.89 dKH on Trident vs. 8.39 Hanna) and Mg was way off (1295 on the Trident vs. 1410-1420 on several titration tests). Aside from dosing, the only variable that's changed is that the reagents are approximately 1 month old.

This is obviously frustrating for a variety of reasons. Most of us (at least me) bought the Trident so that we could eliminate at least some of our various assortment of manual testing kits. While I'm willing to acknowledge that there's more user error with manual testing (even the Hanna digital tests), considering the number of different sources and timeframe that I acquired the manual testing kits - at least some of them have to be accurate. And the fact that every single batch of Trident calibration fluid tested off is really inexcusable. And the 2-month reagent packs were also purchased at different times through different vendors.

Since many of us also got the DOS so we could tie it into the Trident and have the Trident regulate dosing, this further makes a mess of things when the Trident ends up being off. It sure seems like Neptune has some quality control issues with both their reagents and calibration fluid (assuming the issue isn't with the Trident itself).

So I'm back to recalibrating my Trident (again) with tank water and the aforementioned numbers I obtained from manual testing, and will continue testing kH, Ca and Mg every 2 weeks and monitoring to see if the Trident maintains these numbers or starts to drift again.

 

[lambe00j]

Ugh I am having the same issue. My Ca is about 90 off. I have not dosed in over 10 days, (auto dosing off trident numbers). I decided to check it today with my Red Sea kit. I am running 430 Ca vs trident telling me it’s at 521 (goes from 510-532 in 6 hours).
So frustrating that we spend this money just to manually do it each week.
But the fix I take it is, manual check water with Hanna, then input those numbers into the calibration of the trident to calibrate it?

 

[MichaelReefer]

The trident is accurate to +/-15 ppm in measuring calcium. All your measurements fall into that margin.

+1

 

[MichaelReefer]

As a fellow Trident owner, I will say this one thing. It's not really even about the accuracy, its more that you can see "odd" fluctuations. If all of a sudden you see something take a dive you should test it with a secondary test ANYWAYS. Not saying its an excuse for the Trident to not be accurate, but NEVER go by just one test source.

 

[lambe00j]

As a fellow Trident owner, I will say this one thing. It's not really even about the accuracy, its more that you can see "odd" fluctuations. If all of a sudden you see something take a dive you should test it with a secondary test ANYWAYS. Not saying its an excuse for the Trident to not be accurate, but NEVER go by just one test source.

What is a second test type your recommend? It could cost just as much to get Hanna to verify the checks, but then why have a trident?

but I would be curious to see what a viable second tester would be.

 

[MichaelReefer]

What is a second test type your recommend? It could cost just as much to get Hanna to verify the checks, but then why have a trident?

but I would be curious to see what a viable second tester would be.

I use Hanna as well. You cant just go off one test. If you post on here and say you had a spike, a drop, or any abnormalities everyone is going to ask if you tested it with something else. Even if the Trident is off a bit, if you see your alk drop by 2.0, obviously something is wrong.