Water analysis setups: Top quality industrial?

[Damien Egan]

Hi group.
I'm new here and would love to hear from those of you in the know: I need a time-efficient, top quality industrial water parameter testing system to be operated by a lab technician on a daily basis. He or she will be taking samples of seawater collected on natural reefs, storage and treatment tanks, Coral fragging farms and large public exhibits. I need this to be long-lasting, extremely accurate and low maintenance. Parameters will include:
PH; alkalinity; ammonia; Nitrate, nitrite; phosphate; calcium; magnesium; iodine; strontium.

I'd also love some advice on bulk suppliers of reliable reagents and buffers for manual test kits

Cost isn't a hassle as I'm not paying for it

Thanks in advance, Damien

 

[LadyTang2]

Bump

 

[Gareth elliott]

DR1900 Portable Spectrophotometer

DR1900 Portable Spectrophotometer

www.hach.com

Hanna also makes some bench top multi parameter testers.

 

[LadyTang2]

DR1900 Portable Spectrophotometer

DR1900 Portable Spectrophotometer

www.hach.com

Hanna also makes some bench top multi parameter testers.

Thanks Gareth,

Do these spectrophotometers use the same reagents as the standard photometers?

What makes this better if it also uses reagents, is it just better at reading the color of the sample w reagent?

Thanks!

 

[Gareth elliott]

the reagents cause the ion tested for to become bound to an acid, then a ph reactive dye is present. The machine then reads the color as a particular ph that spits out a parameter value(my not being a chemist way of understanding lol)


I believe nitrate will need to use a multiple reagent instead of hachs single reagent because of the interference from NaCl.
@Bulk Reef Supply I believe uses a hach for their brs tv. Maybe they can chime in On using one.

the hanna benchtops i believe work on titration and a ph meter For their tests.

 

[LadyTang2]

@Bulk Reef Supply

Is Gareth correct in that you guys use a spectrophotometer for your testing?

How does operating work? Simply add a reagent? Does nitrate require multiple reagents?

Thanks

 

[YankeeTankee]

A friend of mine whose an organic chemist said colorimeters should get you ~ 5% accuracy while spectrophotometers get you ~ 1%. I'm no chemist and cannot verify this but it gives you some idea.

As for how these things operate, maybe @Rick Mathew or @EMeyer could help.

 

[LadyTang2]

Thanks all

Yea is it as simple as, taking a water sample, adding reagent, then this thing gives you a value? Does it have programmed in the units, like you scroll to a test then it gives you the results in correct units?

Just trying to get an idea how these work. Thanks again. A step by step on how the test works would be awesome and any useful things an operator should know

 

[Gareth elliott]

I am sure calling up hach will get you some information. Any serious inquiry into a $4000 piece of equipment sure they will have very good customer service lol.

 

[EMeyer]

Hi group.
I'm new here and would love to hear from those of you in the know: I need a time-efficient, top quality industrial water parameter testing system to be operated by a lab technician on a daily basis. He or she will be taking samples of seawater collected on natural reefs, storage and treatment tanks, Coral fragging farms and large public exhibits. I need this to be long-lasting, extremely accurate and low maintenance. Parameters will include:
PH; alkalinity; ammonia; Nitrate, nitrite; phosphate; calcium; magnesium; iodine; strontium.

I'd also love some advice on bulk suppliers of reliable reagents and buffers for manual test kits

Cost isn't a hassle as I'm not paying for it

Thanks in advance, Damien

I'd consider a spectrophotometer, since you will have a large number of different tests and a lab tech to run it. A real spec will allow you to do important things like run blanks and standard curves, that will improve both the accuracy and the precision of the measurement relative to other approaches.

You can spend a *lot* on a lab-grade spec. I chose a teaching-grade instrument available for about $200 on eBay or AliExpress. And I've been really happy with it. This would take care of any colorimetric tests.

For pH I think a probe is the preferred solution by far. For alkalinity, titration based tests are the only option I have ever used and instruments don't really help for these, since the resolution is limited by drop size rather than detection of a color change.

I discussed the cheap spec I'm using a little bit here

use R&D spectrometer for all test

Happy Sunday everyone. I hope this is the right forum to post questions that relate to testing reef's parameters. I wonder if anyone is using lab grade spectrometer for all of your tests. A brief search on spectrometers and methods of converting wavelengths of known/unknown solutions to...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Malcontent]

The DR/1900 is kind of a dead product. Most people use the DR/900 or jump to the DR/3900 or DR/6000.

I would get a spectrophotometer with UV so you can use the reagent-less nitrate method. Although I haven't tried it personally, research indicates it will work with seawater. The only Hach product with a UV bulb DR/6000.

The DR/6000 also has an optional carousel so you can test several samples.

Alternatively, there is the Thermo-Fisher AquaMate 8000 which can use Hach reagents and is $4,000 less. It doesn't appear to have a motorized carousel though.

Many public aquariums use the DR/6000 or its predecessor, the DR/5000.

I'm not sure even these devices have sufficiently low minimum detection levels though. I would compare the MDLs of their test methods with the range you're targeting. There are more precise methods used by researchers but they don't really exist in any commercial product.