Trident Pre-Purchase Questions

[ubiq]

Thinking about buying a Trident. Could use some help in making up my mind. It's a lot of money.

1- What's the shelf life of unopened reagents?
2- Can any doser other than the DOS be controlled by the Apex?
3- Can the frequency of tests be user-determined? Suppose I don't require 2 calcium tests daily, and wish to dial it back to 1; or even once every 2 days to conserve reagent. Is this possible?
4- Is there any practical advantage to using the DOS Dual Reservoir as opposed to any other off-the-shelf reservoir?

Thanks

 

[SuncrestReef]

Thinking about buying a Trident. Could use some help in making up my mind. It's a lot of money.

1- What's the shelf life of unopened reagents?
2- Can any doser other than the DOS be controlled by the Apex?
3- Can the frequency of tests be user-determined? Suppose I don't require 2 calcium tests daily, and wish to dial it back to 1; or even once every 2 days to conserve reagent. Is this possible?
4- Is there any practical advantage to using the DOS Dual Reservoir as opposed to any other off-the-shelf reservoir?

Thanks

1. Reagents are good for 1 year unopened.
2. Only the DOS has full automated integration with the Trident. Any other doser can be used, but the programming will be clumsy, limited, and will not automatically revert to a safe level in the event of inaccurate Trident readings.
3. You can only choose the number of tests per day, at fixed intervals. The minimum is 4 alk/2 cal/2 mag tests per day. The max is 24/12/12. It will always run two alk tests for each cal/mag tests. The only way around this is to set the Trident to Manual mode where you can run a test at will, but not on a schedule. However, Neptune warns that reagent can dry up inside the tubes if not run on the recommended minimum cycle.
4. The DDR only provides you with optical sensors (which have a history of failing...mine failed 3 times in one year) and the dashboard tile will show you a visual of the volume remaining. You can buy a DIY version of the optical sensors to use in a reservoir of your choice for much less money.

 

[Brett S]

Thinking about buying a Trident. Could use some help in making up my mind. It's a lot of money.

1- What's the shelf life of unopened reagents?

Unopened reagents last a while. They sell reagent in 6 month quantities, so more than six months.

2- Can any doser other than the DOS be controlled by the Apex?

The apex can control a lot of dosers, but not as well as it can control the DOS. With the DOS you can tell it “dose 60ml a day” or even “dose 30ml in the morning and 50ml at night”. With other dosers it’s more of just on/off and you need to do the math to figure out how much it’s dosing. You can do a lot of the same things with other dosers, but it is more complicated to set them up and program them. The DOS makes it easy.

likewise, the trident controlled dosing only works with the but you could write some complex programs to control dosing with other dosers based on the trident results.

3- Can the frequency of tests be user-determined? Suppose I don't require 2 calcium tests daily, and wish to dial it back to 1; or even once every 2 days to conserve reagent. Is this possible?

the frequency of the tests can be user selected, but 4 alkalinity and 2 calcium/magnesium is the minimum. You can test more frequently than that if you prefer, but it will always have the ratio of 2 alkalinity to 1 calcium/magnesium

4- Is there any practical advantage to using the DOS Dual Reservoir as opposed to any other off-the-shelf reservoir?

The DDR has integrated optical sensors that let you know when the level is low. But you could replicate something like this with a breakout box and float switches.