Trident vs Hanna for Alk Accuracy

[happysalt]

Hey so I picked up my trident around a week ago. Just ran it through the calibration and it is saying my alk is 7.68. My hanna checker says 8.3 and my salifert test kit says 8.4. was it just unable to calibrate properly or what should I have done?

 

[Gareth elliott]

I believe all of the major alkalinity tests have an error percentage of +\- ~.05. Your results are little outside that, but if add both together say the trident is reporting low the hanna a little high.
More important than an actual number is the stability of the findings. If chose 1 test say trident and the daily variation is less than .5dkh you are likely fine.

 

[Tobe71]

I heard the Trident accuracy is akin to API. Yet another reason I’m sticking with my Hanna and Salifert as a back up.

 

[road_runner]

Am seeing reports by customers their tridents drift in reading once they calibrate. Not sure if the trend will go up or down by time.
Hannah can start giving drift if the reagent is old.
My experince with khg is solid over the life time of the mixed reagent...

 

[Tobe71]

Am seeing reports by customers their tridents drift in reading once they calibrate. Not sure if the trend will go up or down by time.
Hannah can start giving drift if the reagent is old.
My experince with khg is solid over the life time of the mixed reagent...

What is KHG?

 

[road_runner]

What is KHG?

Kh guardian

 

[happysalt]

Ok but in my case, what should I do, just allow testing to continue and checking with hanna to see when it evens out again?

 

[Silver14SS]

Without using an alkalinity standard, I don’t think you’ll be able to determine which is accurate.

 

[Gareth elliott]

I would follow precision not accuracy. If your trident is giving predictable results based on how you are dosing. How accurate it is, is kinda irrelevant. And again all the tests you have used have an error range of +\-5% at a max variance of .92% difference between them. This is all in the ranges they have. Unless you use actual laboratory grade equipment to test with you are not going to get an exact alkalinity for your tank.
How precise the tests you use are what is important for stability. My 2 cents anyway.

 

[road_runner]

Without using an alkalinity standard, I don’t think you’ll be able to determine which is accurate.

It's also a matter of how much you trust your tester and its performance over time.I remember cross testing my khg unit everyday when I 1st got it. Using multiple testers that are new to get any variation or doubt out of my mind. But once I realize that's a stable accurate and yield similar results my external testers I let it go and now I test once every 2 to 3 months to check for any irregularities.
If tester showing irregularities early on, it can be an indication that it will trend even worst over time when tubing wear down....

 

[road_runner]

I would follow precision not accuracy. If your trident is giving predictable results based on how you are dosing. How accurate it is, is kinda irrelevant. And again all the tests you have used have an error range of +\-5% at a max variance of .92% difference between them. This is all in the ranges they have. Unless you use actual laboratory grade equipment to test with you are not going to get an exact alkalinity for your tank.
How precise the tests you use are what is important for stability. My 2 cents anyway.

Agreed repeatability is more important than simply the test value. Fixed delta can be compensated. But continues or random drift, if every time you test you get diffrent results that's a problem.
That's why I depend on passive test(running multiple tests back to back or testing isolated tank water in a seorate bucket 5 times) and I expect all results come with the same number especially over time.

 

[Fiesty]

If u have leftover Trident calibration fluid use that to run a test with the trident. And your hannah checker as well. With trident just take the source water tubing and put into calibatiin fluid bottle and run a manual test. See if it comes close to numbers on bottle. And compare that with test u do from trident fluid used in Hannah checker and should get a good idea of what going down.

 

[Tobe71]

I would follow precision not accuracy. If your trident is giving predictable results based on how you are dosing. How accurate it is, is kinda irrelevant. And again all the tests you have used have an error range of +\-5% at a max variance of .92% difference between them. This is all in the ranges they have. Unless you use actual laboratory grade equipment to test with you are not going to get an exact alkalinity for your tank.
How precise the tests you use are what is important for stability. My 2 cents anyway.

I get your point, but when you have thousands of dollars worth of corals lives at stake and pay a pretty penny for monitoring devices, I want them to be legit/accurate.

Cheap example, I had an inkbird that was off by 10 degrees. I confirmed it repeatedly and it was always off by exactly 10 degrees. I threw it away eventually because I just didn’t trust it.

 

[ca1ore]

Trend line (precision) is more important as long as you maintain alk within an acceptable range. I’ve kept my reef tanks at alk approaching 12 and also at 7 (based on hobby grade test kits). Very little observable health difference in the corals. It’s hard to know absolute accuracy without multiple data points. My Hanna routinely reads almost a full 1.0 higher than my trident. So I shoot for 9 on trident figuring that even if it’s really 10, that’s ok. Don’t be a slave to testing though - how does the tank look? That should be your guide.

 

[road_runner]

Trend line (precision) is more important as long as you maintain alk within an acceptable range. I’ve kept my reef tanks at alk approaching 12 and also at 7 (based on hobby grade test kits). Very little observable health difference in the corals. It’s hard to know absolute accuracy without multiple data points. My Hanna routinely reads almost a full 1.0 higher than my trident. So I shoot for 9 on trident figuring that even if it’s really 10, that’s ok. Don’t be a slave to testing though - how does the tank look? That should be your guide.

More of orange and apple kind of argument, Debating what's good for the coral is diffrent than talking about precision of a test equipment. You are not dealing with margins and trend from the test equipment only, your dosers and some other factors also have margin and trend. Which means final margin seen by coral can vary. Also trends can be random. How do you propose characterizing the trend? More testing from external kits and more spending? What if trend started with 0.1 down a week then it became 0.3 or 0.2?
Test equipment job is take all this guess work out of the equation, if the equipment cannot provide that, then it's not worth the investment.. this goes to every test equipment in the world
You pay for equipment to do specific thing, you want it to be right as much as possible. What coral can or cannot tolerate is diffrent story and depend on the coral itself. Do you know that coral tolerance change with diffrent parameters?
As an example, with low nutrients level and low po4, coral much more sensitive to alk swing. In my ULNS my millies will not tolerate 0.4ppm alk swing in a day.. while when I have po4 high, I can go up to 1ppm a day seeing with no problems. This is well documented in UNLS literature btw.
These small details matter and the lack of attention to these details creat the perception of this coral or that is hard or too sensitive..

 

[Gareth elliott]

Time your trident has been testing will be your gauge of precision.

As an example say you are using the trident to test 4 times a day.
You are dosing by hand everyday, once a day, the equivalent of 53 mg dry solution in a 100 liter system.

The precision of the tests will be how well they confirm your systems usage, when compared to your lighting schedule. For the sake of simplicity this system will only populated with new frags, that have not started growing yet. You should see roughly a tank usage of .537 ppm daily during this time frame.

For ulns numbers i find that attempting to achieve the accuracy you are referring to probably impossible as even lab grade testing is not going to be accurate down to .02dkh.

Forgive me if my math or logic is off, nursing a shoulder injury atm.

 

[road_runner]

Time your trident has been testing will be your gauge of precision.

As an example say you are using the trident to test 4 times a day.
You are dosing by hand everyday, once a day, the equivalent of 53 mg dry solution in a 100 liter system.

The precision of the tests will be how well they confirm your systems usage, when compared to your lighting schedule. For the sake of simplicity this system will only populated with new frags, that have not started growing yet. You should see roughly a tank usage of .537 ppm daily during this time frame.

For ulns numbers i find that attempting to achieve the accuracy you are referring to probably impossible as even lab grade testing is not going to be accurate down to .02dkh.

Forgive me if my math or logic is off, nursing a shoulder injury atm.

You are missing my point of pushing against being ok with a test equipment that is advertised with specific function and tolerance, yet we say its old of ot has trends and ups and downs..
What you described is how to react to such ..

 

[Gareth elliott]

Maybe @Terence will help

 

[NeptunePaul Verified Sponsor]

I'll respond to the OP here as there as already a good deal of back forth.

- The 8.3 Hanna that has a stated error of +/- 5% that is 7.89- 8.72 dKH.
- The Trident at 7.68 with a precision of +/- .05 dKH is between 7.63-7.73.
- So they are a bit off, on your next calibration I would use the left over solution and test it with your Hanna to see what the Hanna reports the calibration dKH is. As we have encountered this with other users already, most people find that the Hanna reports to the same degree off on the calibration standard as well. Then once they check their hanna with the available reference check set it is also off at that same level. Not saying that is the case here, it is just what we typically see in most situations like this.
- Are you pulling your water at the for the Hanna at the exact time the Trident is testing? Are you certain the Trident is not pulling in any air bubbles during its testing? Air/micro bubbles can introduce a considerable amount of error into your measurements.

As others have mentioned, the most important thing to consider here is the precision. If that is showing consistency, then that is what I would focus on most. Based on the information here, I do believe the Trident is accurately reporting your dKH, but if you feel the Hanna is more the "right" number, then feel free to calibrate the Trident to your aquarium water and use the Hanna number for the dKH in the calibration process.

If you have more questions, then please reach out to our team. We are happy to help.

 

[dz6t]

More of orange and apple kind of argument, Debating what's good for the coral is diffrent than talking about precision of a test equipment. You are not dealing with margins and trend from the test equipment only, your dosers and some other factors also have margin and trend. Which means final margin seen by coral can vary. Also trends can be random. How do you propose characterizing the trend? More testing from external kits and more spending? What if trend started with 0.1 down a week then it became 0.3 or 0.2?
Test equipment job is take all this guess work out of the equation, if the equipment cannot provide that, then it's not worth the investment.. this goes to every test equipment in the world
You pay for equipment to do specific thing, you want it to be right as much as possible. What coral can or cannot tolerate is diffrent story and depend on the coral itself. Do you know that coral tolerance change with diffrent parameters?
As an example, with low nutrients level and low po4, coral much more sensitive to alk swing. In my ULNS my millies will not tolerate 0.4ppm alk swing in a day.. while when I have po4 high, I can go up to 1ppm a day seeing with no problems. This is well documented in UNLS literature btw.
These small details matter and the lack of attention to these details creat the perception of this coral or that is hard or too sensitive..

I guess you meant dKH instead of ppm.