Recent content by JimWelsh

Small footprint until you realize those seven different reagent bottles gotta go somehwere!

It might also mean that they've all been scavenged by amphipods or other predators.

I once had the opposite problem years ago. I had a batch of IO with really high Mg. I forget the exact number, but it was something like 2000-2500 PPM. I had just gotten a new Salifert Mg kit at the same time this happened, so I complained to BRS about my bad test kit, and they sent me...

Same here. White food-grade Brute containers always got that smell if I let mixed up water sit in it for a while with the lid on. Never had any issues, other than that smell. If I kept it aerated, the smell wouldn't happen. This was using Instant Ocean.

Including the starting a support ticket part?

Seriously, I always just used my fingers and took my time.

Nice!

I was thinking it would need a styrofoam raft or something like that.

Back when I was developing the Trident prototype (my "Alkalinity Monitor"), and I was testing for Alk only every 10 minutes 24/7, I was dosing alk and Ca staggered in tiny increments all day long. This caused a really predictable sawtooth wave that lagged behind my photoperiod by about an hour...

Wow. That's a lot of trust in the refractometer. So, you must be calibrating it with a 35 PPT standard before every use, right?

I always consistently mixed a fixed volume of salt mix with a fixed volume of water, and got consistent results that way. It sounds like you guys are mixing arbitrary amounts of salt and water until your refractometer gives you the number you want? Am I reading this correctly?

FWIW, the Trident's combined Ca + Mg, when converted to moles instead of PPM, tracks tank salinity very nicely, unless something changes to dramatically change either Ca or Mg or both.

You should open a ticket with Neptune Support. Make sure you tell them you're using ABC Reagents.

Yes. The basic issue here is that some of the "calcium carbonate" that makes up the skeletons of calcifying animals is really magnesium carbonate, so the alk:calcium ratio being consumed in skeleton formation is greater than a 1:1 ratio. Coralline tends to include more magnesium as a fraction...

O2 has no effect on pH.