Trident FAQ (official)

[Brett S]

@Terence. Just got my Trident today and I’m super excited. This was from a fairly recent batch I believe (It was shipped from BRS on Tuesday the 4th). Unfortunately I’m not sure the leaky bottle issue has been totally resolved. There was a tiny bit of moisture both the bag with the calibration fluid as well as the bag with the reagents. The Neptune sticker that was in the bag with the reagents has some purple stains on it from the reagents as well.

It certainly wasn’t as bad as what some people have reported and there weren’t really even any visible drips collected at the bottom of the bags, but there was still some moisture and leakage where there shouldn’t have been.

Just to follow up on this, my Trident has been installed and producing stable results for 48 hours, so I went to calibrate it this afternoon and I’m a bit concerned about the viability of my calibration solution.

I took off the cap and the solution was exposed to air. It appears that there was supposed to be a seal over the top of the jar, but that seal was waterlogged and inside the cap and not sealing anything at all.

I went ahead and calibrated with it anyway since it says that it’s only good for 8 hours from when it is opened and I assume no one from Neptune will be around until Monday.

That said, Neptune, is it safe to assume that this calibration is valid and the solution was still good to use despite the leakage and seal failure?

 

[Jon M.]

Just to follow up on this, my Trident has been installed and producing stable results for 48 hours, so I went to calibrate it this afternoon and I’m a bit concerned about the viability of my calibration solution.

I took off the cap and the solution was exposed to air. It appears that there was supposed to be a seal over the top of the jar, but that seal was waterlogged and inside the cap and not sealing anything at all.

I went ahead and calibrated with it anyway since it says that it’s only good for 8 hours from when it is opened and I assume no one from Neptune will be around until Monday.

That said, Neptune, is it safe to assume that this calibration is valid and the solution was still good to use despite the leakage and seal failure?

I had the same issue. After calibration all my parameters were still on except calc. Its weird how mine is exactly 100 ppm off.

 

[Jstn]

They include a calibration standard with each set of reagents, so I assume their intention is that you calibrate each time you change the full set of reagents.

I understand the assumption but I was wonder what Neptune recommends

 

[Brett S]

I had the same issue. After calibration all my parameters were still on except calc. Its weird how mine is exactly 100 ppm off.

In my case even out of the box Alkalinity and Calcium were both within about 3 or 4% of what I had been seeing with my Hanna checkers. The trident was slightly lower than Hanna in both cases, but only slightly.

Magnesium was off by a bit more... Trident thinks that it’s about 1700ppm and the Salifert test I was using put it closer to 1600ppm, but even that’s only off by about 6%. (And yes, I know my magnesium is high. I discovered this a couple of weeks ago because I hadn’t been testing regularly and apparently I had been dosing a bit too much. I’m working to slowly bring it down. But on a side note, this is one reason that I’m very glad that the Trident does Calcium and Magnesium in addition to Alkalinity.)

The calibration is still running, so I’ll do another test after it finishes and see if that affects the numbers at all.

 

[Brett S]

One more point of weirdness... after the calibration finished the Apex recorded the parameters of the calibration solution as test results, so now the graph of my tank parameters shows weird spikes where the calibration solution differs from my tank water values.

I would assume that the results from testing the calibration solution as part of the calibration should be suppressed.

 

[Jon M.]

One more point of weirdness... after the calibration finished the Apex recorded the parameters of the calibration solution as test results, so now the graph of my tank parameters shows weird spikes where the calibration solution differs from my tank water values.

I would assume that the results from testing the calibration solution as part of the calibration should be suppressed.

Mine did the same.

 

[TTNuge]

One more point of weirdness... after the calibration finished the Apex recorded the parameters of the calibration solution as test results, so now the graph of my tank parameters shows weird spikes where the calibration solution differs from my tank water values.

I would assume that the results from testing the calibration solution as part of the calibration should be suppressed.

Hopefully that's an enhancement they can add soon. Not a huge deal as it rolls off the graph fairly quickly but still should be kept separate.

 

[Maximus]

I have been assimilated! I just hooked it up and it tests and makes noises and then says "idle" without any test numbers on fusion. Does anyone know what "idle" means?

 

[TheHarold]

I have been assimilated! I just hooked it up and it tests and makes noises and then says "idle" without any test numbers on fusion. Does anyone know what "idle" means?

The definition of idle? Waiting; not doing anything.

If it says idle, you can manually tell it to do a test or can wait till it’s next testing time.

 

[cperry7467]

I have been assimilated! I just hooked it up and it tests and makes noises and then says "idle" without any test numbers on fusion. Does anyone know what "idle" means?

That means the Trident is just sitting there waiting until the next scheduled test.

 

[Maximus]

Thanks. Any idea why there aren't any numbers displayed after the test is done? It's reading zeroes on all 3 tests.

 

[cperry7467]

Thanks. Any idea why there aren't any numbers displayed after the test is done? It's reading zeroes on all 3 tests.

Did you run the Trident initial setup task yet?

 

[Maximus]

Did you run the Trident initial setup task yet?

Yes, I did. I primed it as well.

 

[cperry7467]

Yes, I did. I primed it as well.

Not sure. Maybe try running a combined test now. It doesn't alternate between idle and an error message does it?

 

[Maximus]

Not sure. Maybe try running a combined test now. It doesn't alternate between idle and an error message does it?

Haven't seen an error message yet. How long does it take to test all 3 parameters? Thanks for your help.

 

[cperry7467]

Haven't seen an error message yet. How long does it take to test all 3 parameters? Thanks for your help.

20-25 minutes typically. It will showing testing and change to idle when it's complete.

 

[Maximus]

20-25 minutes typically. It will showing testing and change to idle when it's complete.

Sounds good. It's testing now and I will update asap.

 

[Brett S]

Yes, I did. I primed it as well.

You didn’t need to prime it as that was automatically done during the initial setup task, but the extra prime won’t hurt anything.

It is a bit confusing though because it shows a status of “testing” during any operation, including priming and calibrating, even though it might not actually be testing. Even though it says “testing” during the initial setup and as it primes neither of those operations will return any results.

It’s possible that you sent the command to test before the priming had finished, which would cause it to ignore that command. Since it lists the status as “testing” during priming I can see how that would be confusing.

Now that it’s back at “idle” you know that it’s done and ready for a command, so go ahead and initiate a test now. If you do the combined test it should take around 30 minutes to complete. Once you tell it to test it might take a short time for it to change the status to “testing”, but you should hear it start making noises pretty quickly. It won’t report the results until all of the tests have completely finished.

 

[Maximus]

Yes! It's working! Thanks again Cperry for all your help. I suppose I will calibrate it in a few days.

 

[Maximus]

You didn’t need to prime it as that was automatically done during the initial setup task, but the extra prime won’t hurt anything.

It is a bit confusing though because it shows a status of “testing” during any operation, including priming and calibrating, even though it might not actually be testing. Even though it says “testing” during the initial setup and as it primes neither of those operations will return any results.

It’s possible that you sent the command to test before the priming had finished, which would cause it to ignore that command. Since it lists the status as “testing” during priming I can see how that would be confusing.

Now that it’s back at “idle” you know that it’s done and ready for a command, so go ahead and initiate a test now. If you do the combined test it should take around 30 minutes to complete. Once you tell it to test it might take a short time for it to change the status to “testing”, but you should hear it start making noises pretty quickly. It won’t report the results until all of the tests have completely finished.

Thanks Brett. It's working now. How soon did you calibrate it?