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Mastertronic users

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richiev

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Anyone have a mastertronic and have feedback on it? They're expensive, but I'm lazy, and I like that it can test all the things and also doesn't require a specific controller.

I'm considering putting one on my "dear my birthday is coming up, and this would be easy for you to buy me; it's an investment!" list.
 
I love it ! Easy to use , the capex is high but the opex is lower than a Neptune Alex ( I have both )
It’s accurate , easy to use . I am loving it
 
Coral2Coral said:
This guy over at R2R is documenting a DIY tester similar to mastertronic.

www.reef2reef.com

DIY Robotic Tester - BoraTronic

www.reef2reef.com www.reef2reef.com
Click to expand...
I saw that, and I was interested in DIY'ing, but after my experience with reef pi I'm not sure the ROI will be there. The components are still not cheap, the time investment required to get these things built and working is incredibly high, the ongoing maintenance cost also is high, and diy implies basically 0 QA process so the reliability seems to suck... Also as with all of us, once we get bored we move on, and then you're stuck with a device whose improvements are highly dependent on some random internet dude not getting bored (forking aside).

That being said I did fill up a cart with some parts from a diy guide, because I kinda think it's fun to diy this stuff, but I did hold off clicking buy because of those reasons.
 
Beanju said:
I love it ! Easy to use , the capex is high but the opex is lower than a Neptune Alex ( I have both )
It’s accurate , easy to use . I am loving it
Click to expand...
What's the ongoing maintenance burden? Does it require constant tweaking or is good-to-go once stabilized?
 
richiev said:
I saw that, and I was interested in DIY'ing, but after my experience with reef pi I'm not sure the ROI will be there. The components are still not cheap, the time investment required to get these things built and working is incredibly high, the ongoing maintenance cost also is high, and diy implies basically 0 QA process so the reliability seems to suck... Also as with all of us, once we get bored we move on, and then you're stuck with a device whose improvements are highly dependent on some random internet dude not getting bored (forking aside).

That being said I did fill up a cart with some parts from a diy guide, because I kinda think it's fun to diy this stuff, but I did hold off clicking buy because of those reasons.
Click to expand...
Interested to see the final product and some run time results. But seems to be an interesting project.
 
It looks a lot like the ReefBot I used to use.
But it does seem to have better quality components, and looks a lot less "built in the garage."

That sort of colormetric system should work well. The ReefBot did. Plus it uses standard reagents.
The downside to the idea is all the little moving parts required.
That is what happened to the ReefBot. Worked great, then some part broke. Fixed, then another broke. Etc. Eventually gave up.
 
rygh said:
It looks a lot like the ReefBot I used to use.
But it does seem to have better quality components, and looks a lot less "built in the garage."

That sort of colormetric system should work well. The ReefBot did. Plus it uses standard reagents.
The downside to the idea is all the little moving parts required.
That is what happened to the ReefBot. Worked great, then some part broke. Fixed, then another broke. Etc. Eventually gave up.
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Do you still have the reefbot?
 
I never had a trident but I do see people posting that they fidget with them. I think whatever component it is. It will work for 2-4 months then require some sort of fidgeting.
 
phc567 said:
I never had a trident but I do see people posting that they fidget with them. I think whatever component it is. It will work for 2-4 months then require some sort of fidgeting.
Click to expand...
Fiddling with it a couple times a year I think I'm cool with. Fiddling with it weekly I'm not. I guess the other consideration is resale on all these seems pretty high. So I can always sell it, ignoring that meaning it really just ends up in the shameful pile of things I tell myself I'll sell.
 
On the Trident, the fidgeting is usually needed when people let something run dry and the salt crystals build up. The solution is to flush rodi with a syringe through the tubing and 9/10 times that makes it work first try.
 
richiev said:
What's the ongoing maintenance burden? Does it require constant tweaking or is good-to-go once stabilized?
Click to expand...
For me it has been good to go right away. Very simple. You just get a reminder once in a while to recalibrate the pump but that’s all
 
I've got all three - Mastertronic, Alkatronic, and Dosetronic.

I've only had them a few weeks, and am still fiddling. I'll probably post more detail in my tank journal when I get them all dialed in, but here are some thoughts so far:

+ It's SO NICE not having to test anything at all. N and P in particular, I had mine testing both daily and it was very helpful in balancing my nutrient export
+ The machine is pretty reliable so far once it's set up. It maintains its internet connection, does what you expect it to do, etc
+ Customer support is excellent - both from CoralVue as well as when they've had to escalate directly to Focustronic, but that brings me to the first negative...

- The manual sucks. I a consider myself a reasonably smart fellow and a tinkerer, and I still had to hit up CS a couple of times for some strangeness during set up. I didn't get everything calibrated correctly, despite my best efforts, and was getting wonky test results.

- The app is just...OK. They are continually updating it, but it's really slow to reflect your inputs. You will make changes to the testing schedule, for example, and they don't show up for a while. Sometimes not at all, and you have to enter them again. It's just kinda clunky and unintuitive. This seems par for the course with all reef companies though, so I've grown to expect it. Reefbeat, Mobius, the AI one - they all suck IMO.

The jury is still out on how it integrates with the Dosetronic, but I've set it up to maintain N and P within a certain range based on the test results from MT, we'll see how it works over a few weeks. The Dosetronic part of the app sucks even worse than the MT. The scheduling is not intuitive AT ALL.

The Alkatronic, for anyone curious, is pretty awesome. It's the most straightforward to set up, has the best section of the app, and has kept my Alk super stable.
 
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