How often do you measure Alkalinity?
- Thread starter Wlachnit
- Start date
ashburn2k
Supporting Member
tankguy
Supporting Member
No just the one reef now. I never test the FO
jorahx4
Guest
Can you program it to test at a schedule you decide? For alkatronic you choose “every X amount of hours” which is a pain in the A**.
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Coral reefer
Past President
Let’s skip the trident and just make a robotic reef keeper with super intelligence. Immune to paly toxin...would never work on the tank after “A” beer...not tempted by impulse buys... built in Dry side of a magnet cleaner...
Coral reefer
Past President
Anywhere between weekly and less than monthly depending largely on the tank. How much stony coral and how fast is it growing? How mature is the tank?
If I have a good handle on a system that’s been stable awhile and see it often enough I basically check out the corals and verify whatever dosing pump type equipment is working and do my water change and not worry about testing.
Newer tanks sometimes even Dailey to get dosing dialed in. Plenty of Lps/softie tanks never and just do water changes, no dosing.
Every tank (and reefer) is different.
I do believe if I had the trident (someday maybe) I’d be happy with 2-3 times per day...
If I have a good handle on a system that’s been stable awhile and see it often enough I basically check out the corals and verify whatever dosing pump type equipment is working and do my water change and not worry about testing.
Newer tanks sometimes even Dailey to get dosing dialed in. Plenty of Lps/softie tanks never and just do water changes, no dosing.
Every tank (and reefer) is different.
I do believe if I had the trident (someday maybe) I’d be happy with 2-3 times per day...
dochou
Supporting Member
Wow, nothing's looked off for a year and a half? Lucky.
dochou
Supporting Member
Question for those of you that only check if something looks awry: what if things look normal but the alk is on the low side and not enough to cause death or recession. How would you know without checking. The alk could be low and just cause your corals to grow very slowly. ie it may not cause coral injury but it's not optimal either. If you don't test, you don't really know either.
sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
Currently not at all, one of the reasons is that the main tank (200g) that would primarily use alkalinity has about a 1-2 square inches of stony corals only currently, although to be honest I should start now just to have a reference point of what fresh salt water is that I'm making. The second reason is I'm sure any alk kits I have expired years ago so I'd be crap shooting what the numbers mean.
That said when I get back from a vacay, going to get some new kits, and start testing a bit more religiously. Water test Saturday! If anything it'll let me know when I need to start dosing kalk.
That said when I get back from a vacay, going to get some new kits, and start testing a bit more religiously. Water test Saturday! If anything it'll let me know when I need to start dosing kalk.
sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
You could just buy a membership at the Cal Academy and go look at their tanks if that's what you wanted
... it'd be WAY cheaper than a Trident too
jonmos75
Supporting Member
I can not not get in to this too much as it is still in Beta Testing and things can change, but there is a drop down with a few different options of how many tests a day you are wanting to do with the minimum being 4 tests (4 Alk and 2 Ca/Mg) and once you choose how many tests a day and it automatically calculates when each of test will be performed.
The Trident has already saved me. When I was testing 4 times a day and this is what I will go back to after I dial in the Ca reactor. and I saw that my ALK was declining. After seeing this I found that my Ca pump stopped working so I was not adding any more Alk in to the tank and the corals were absorbing this in the water. If I did not have the Trident I might not have seen this for a week or two when I used to test my Alk.
jorahx4
Guest
Ah. Sounds similar to the alkatronic. Issue I’m running into is. You choose how many times a day you want it to test. From 2 to 12. But you can not choose a schedule.
For example, it is extremely loud when running (they released quieter pumps which I don’t have yet) so I want to have it not run between 10 pm - 5am (when I am asleep) but that’s not an option. You just choose how many hours apart. So what I have been doing is. Set it for 4 hours apart. And let it test all day. But when I go to bed I unplug it.
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jorahx4
Guest
haha, the alkatronic is LOUD, i have it in another room and in my bed room it keeps me up. i cant close both doors because the cat likes to go into the fish room and look out the window.