Cali Kid Corals

Trident NP - experiences?

IOnceWasLegend

IOnceWasLegend

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After Coralvue's Maven update yesterday, I'm considering adding an NP rather than continuing to wait for what seems increasingly like vaporware. I've heard mixed things, with a common thread of, "It sucked initially, but after some fiddling it's reasonably accurate,"

Anybody used/still using one and can offer their input?
 
Hey Josh..I'm about half way through my first set of reagents and have recently gotten to the point where I'm finding the readings from the NP useful. The first couple days NO3 seemed spot on but the PO4 low, a day after it was the opposite. After calibrating with tank water and using hanna readings as reference, they're pretty in line with each other.

Upon set up, there is alot of fiddling you will have to do to get it consistent. The time I thought id save performing water test seemed to be taken up by calibrating and troubleshooting. Once tuned right the trends seemed trustworthy, although I do spot check still.

It would be nice to change the cadence to test every 3 days or even weekly eventually, but it seems daily test is the only option. At roughly $1 per day for the reagents, it can add up. Unfortunately there's no 3rd party reagents out for it as well, similar to what's out there for the regular Trident.

@Ayman has been tuning his recently as well. Hopefully he'll chime in with his experiences.

HTH
 
finalphaze987 said:
Hey Josh..I'm about half way through my first set of reagents and have recently gotten to the point where I'm finding the readings from the NP useful. The first couple days NO3 seemed spot on but the PO4 low, a day after it was the opposite. After calibrating with tank water and using hanna readings as reference, they're pretty in line with each other.

Upon set up, there is alot of fiddling you will have to do to get it consistent. The time I thought id save performing water test seemed to be taken up by calibrating and troubleshooting. Once tuned right the trends seemed trustworthy, although I do spot check still.

It would be nice to change the cadence to test every 3 days or even weekly eventually, but it seems daily test is the only option. At roughly $1 per day for the reagents, it can add up. Unfortunately there's no 3rd party reagents out for it as well, similar to what's out there for the regular Trident.

@Ayman has been tuning his recently as well. Hopefully he'll chime in with his experiences.

HTH
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1 USD for both tests or each N and P?
 
Alexander1312 said:
360 USD p.a. That is a lot.
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Agreed. But given that I'd probably be using the hanna checker for both at an annual cost of around $150, I see it as paying to not have to do it myself.

Is it as accurate as I'd like? IMO, no...but I'm not running it for accuracy, I bought it to look at the trends, especially while my system is still rather young.

Long term do I see myself running it 4-5 years from now? As long as things stabilize, I doubt it.
 
finalphaze987 said:
Agreed. But given that I'd probably be using the hanna checker for both at an annual cost of around $150, I see it as paying to not have to do it myself.

Is it as accurate as I'd like? IMO, no...but I'm not running it for accuracy, I bought it to look at the trends, especially while my system is still rather young.

Long term do I see myself running it 4-5 years from now? As long as things stabilize, I doubt it.
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I test nitrates and phosphates once per week. Except in cases of 0 nitrates or phosphates, I have not found a reason to test it more frequently. And I do see a lot of value in water testing overall (including trends).

A hanna test cost 1 USD per parameter, so 2 USD per week, 104 USD p.a. - which is also not cheap for what it does.

I would also think that you continously calibrate the trident with hanna checkers which comes on top of the 360 USD?

But I can see your point you are making on a new system to avoid double or single 0s. Curious if this will prevent you from getting dinos in first 6-12 months. If it does, I can see this being a meaningful investement.
 
I have been fighting high nitrates and phosphates. Being able to see the daily trend lines has been really helpful. Too frequent water changes causes other problems. Here are a few plots from this past month. Using these we have tried to correlate to other activities with the tank.
 

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TheRealMadMax said:
I have been fighting high nitrates and phosphates. Being able to see the daily trend lines has been really helpful. Too frequent water changes causes other problems. Here are a few plots from this past month. Using these we have tried to correlate to other activities with the tank.
Click to expand...

Which activities were you able to correlate them to?
 
Alexander1312 said:
I test nitrates and phosphates once per week. Except in cases of 0 nitrates or phosphates, I have not found a reason to test it more frequently. And I do see a lot of value in water testing overall (including trends).

A hanna test cost 1 USD per parameter, so 2 USD per week, 104 USD p.a. - which is also not cheap for what it does.

I would also think that you continously calibrate the trident with hanna checkers which comes on top of the 360 USD?

But I can see your point you are making on a new system to avoid double or single 0s. Curious if this will prevent you from getting dinos in first 6-12 months. If it does, I can see this being a meaningful investement.
Click to expand...
First week of use I went through x4 of each reagent. I've been performing spot checks weekly just to see how inline the readings are and it's been pretty consistent, so I've been more trusting of the readings it produces. We'll see how it goes after the first reagent change. Hopefully it stays steady.

I haven't had to deal with clogged lines or leaks yet thankfully. I'd probably lean on the expertise here when that eventually does come.

I got dinos early on but have not had to worry aboit it much since I've started to run the UV 24/7. With coral in the tank now, I didn't want to bottom out on nutrients but wanted a way of trending parameters as I try to raise them.

Feeding more has helped slightly, but with my low bioload, has been a slow process. I have a bunch of anthias coming out of QT tomorrow, so that should help. TDO doesn't seem to raise nutrients much. Reef Jerky raises NO3 slightly, but hasn't done anything for PO4. The only feed I've found to elevate things was Rods food, and even that hasn't been enough.
Screenshot_20250426-150124_APEXFusion.jpg


I started using TMP Plus NP to help. It takes a while for the PO4 to register where as the NO3 addition becomes apparent quick. I still perform WC every two weeks to replace trace elements, so bottoming out can come easy if I didn't have these regular readings.
 
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