Really...see I am new. Ion is a completely new word..Heck I thought Trident was coolest.
We started in 1980s in FL with under gravel filters! I put powerheads on mine and forced water down...so I did not have to clean the darn sand! It worked. John Nobel was just down the street and it was a lab experiment! My LWS wemnt diving with me a picked up rocks....now we call live rock. His 225 did AMAZING, we thought huh why.
Today is like iPhone to dial phone. Exciting. I want our animals to thrive...we all do. Not just for $, for Mother Nature and our Lord who created all things for us.
None of these are ion testers.
Ion testers will be out in the coming couppe of months.
These are kh testers using regular titration methos.
Khg and alktrinics been in the market for long time now.
Kh director been there for an year I believe.
All of these including trident all use peristaltic dosers to creat the titration needed to calculate the kh..
Problem with peristaltic pumps is they need regular maintenance and change its tubing otherwise its accuracy degrade which will impact measurment.
Any peristaltic based equipment will require changing the pump tubing every xx months.
Some of these testers sell sub assembly of the pump head you can just change in house like alktronic and kh director. Usually cost is around 30 to 50$
Others sell the tubing whichnos bit harder to change cause it require you open the head itself like kh guardian. Cost is much less(5$) but remember you need to change the tubing yourself
It is not clear how maintenance will be done on the trident, there are couple of infos here and there but it's not really clear how much and how easy it is. I have heard 150$ and 99$. Also early launch there was talk about customer send the unit to Neptune for maintenance, or do DIY kit, which might indicate the proccess is not easy for every customer to do.... still yet to be seen.
In couple.of months ion based testers should be out then it will be seen how good or bad they are and what's the best use case for them.
