Mindstream monitor seems to be available

[Flagg37]

I’ve heard many good things about the reefbot and it will test basically anything(almost) with most available test kits

I think there’s pros and cons to each system. The reefbot requires you to buy and change out the reagents and takes a long time to run each test.

I wonder why they won’t let you just pick up a bunch of discs at your lfs. I can’t imagine those discs cost anywhere near $35 to make. At least offer a discounted year supply. Better yet, it says the product should last at least 5 years before needing to send it in for servicing. Maybe include the cost of that with your subscription.

 

[rygh]

I’ve heard many good things about the reefbot and it will test basically anything(almost) with most available test kits

Yes, definitely a contender.
Very obvious what it does, accuracy, and how it works, since it uses the same kits we already use.
Known (and cheap) cost for refills.

 

[bluprntguy]

I would bet the monthly cost remains close to $35.

Yeah, businesses don’t put wording like “starting at” for nothing. Turns out the monthly plan is actually $39.95/mo. or you can pay for an entire year upfront for $419 and hope the company lasts long enough to send you all 12 disks.

 

[ddrueckh]

I read somewhere that they emailed everyone who participated in Kickstarter and offered them the same discounted price that they would have gotten through that program. Those people were also allowed to order one week before everyone else. Seems like the right thing to do. I believe I saw it posted on their website.
It looks like a great product to me. I hope it works well. It may be a really good option. I don’t mind the subscription price. I think that with the amount of testing it performs (every 15 minutes) that it is worth the monthly price.
The unit price is expensive but it does use different technologies than other units. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is near dead silent (I know I shouldn’t guess) because the only moving part is underwater. It just slowly spins.
I really don’t like testing my parameters. I have money burning in my pocket but don’t know which automatic tester to buy. I will definitely keep my eye on this one.

 

[ofzakaria]

Just placed my order today. Very excited about this product actually.
By far the best offering in the market for me

 

[JVU]

Measuring only carbonate and bicarbonate (I assume that’s what they mean) makes sense biologically and is the vast majority of the total alkalinity. But saying its better than measuring total alk is a bit misleading since they are almost the same and always proportional in our tanks. I wonder how they deal with the numbers coming back slightly lower than we are used to for total alkalinity, since they use this as a product differentiator?

I’m interested in these but not in a rush. I don’t mind doing the manual lab tests personally, but definitely don’t do them on a frequent or reliable schedule. For me it’s more that I think there are new unexpected insights to be made with widespread reliably frequent testing.

 

[sfsuphysics]

For me testing needs to be scheduled or I"ll jump off schedule in a hurry and get lazy, pick a day of the week that I am almost assured to be free and that's test day. Alk is a weekly test along with sG, Calcium, Nitrate, Phosphate is a monthly test, magnesium is maybe bi-monthly or monthly it's allowed to be a lazy test. And luckily the Alk and sG tests are super easy and fast so that works great.

 

[rygh]

Looks like someone on R2R actually received one this week.
They do have the potential to be the best given the small size and all the things they test.

But I gave up a few weeks ago and bought a ReefBot.

 

[ofzakaria]

Looks like someone on R2R actually received one this week.
They do have the potential to be the best given the small size and all the things they test.

But I gave up a few weeks ago and bought a ReefBot.

What I liked about the product is taking the guess work out of the equation for the consumer.
No reagent, disks ship to ly home no annual maintenance and ofcourse the 10 paramaters that includes O2 reading.
Any other solution in the market (trident, ghl ion director or the alktronic new tester) would cost me more entry equipment's and reagent costs for less paramaters...
Will see how it goes when I receive mine.

 

[Flagg37]

What I liked about the product is taking the guess work out of the equation for the consumer.
No reagent, disks ship to ly home no annual maintenance and ofcourse the 10 paramaters that includes O2 reading.
Any other solution in the market (trident, ghl ion director or the alktronic new tester) would cost me more entry equipment's and reagent costs for less paramaters...
Will see how it goes when I receive mine.

I would count that disc as a reagent and in a way, monthly maintenance. You open it up to replace the disc. Who wouldn’t take the moment to wipe away any buildup that may have accumulated at that time. Also they do say to send it in every 5 years for maintenance.

 

[ofzakaria]

I would count that disc as a reagent and in a way, monthly maintenance. You open it up to replace the disc. Who wouldn’t take the moment to wipe away any buildup that may have accumulated at that time. Also they do say to send it in every 5 years for maintenance.

Correct, the disk is like the reagent.
But come on, you cannot compare swapping the disk or wiping it to changing dosing heads in typical testers lol.

 

[rygh]

FYI on ReefBot maintenance:
You need to dump waste water and refill RODI buckets about weekly.
Unless you build something making those unlimited.
You need to refill little vials of reagent when the go empty. Easy.
You need to replace a syringe and clean test chamber about every 60 tests. Easy.
Given the low duty cycle, I don't see ever touching valves/servos/pumps inside.

 

[Flagg37]

FYI on ReefBot maintenance:
You need to dump waste water and refill RODI buckets about weekly.
Unless you build something making those unlimited.
You need to refill little vials of reagent when the go empty. Easy.
You need to replace a syringe and clean test chamber about every 60 tests. Easy.
Given the low duty cycle, I don't see ever touching valves/servos/pumps inside.

Waiting for your full write up on this before I send you a barrage of questions.

 

[Chromis]

Just got a Trident but I am not cancelling my Mindstream order (unless it doesn’t deliver well before my credit card’s 12-week purchase protection limit). The 8-week mark on my Mindstream order is coming up next week, and they are supposed to ship between 6-8 weeks of ordering, so it may not happen.

The Trident has saved me so much time and given me such new insight that I want another monitor for my other tank, but I haven’t been able to get a second Trident yet. Also testing potassium is a bummer (the Red Sea kit takes like 20 mins). I’m not sure I like the intrusiveness of the Mindstream (like having an MP40 on the tank), you can put it in the sump I guess though. The Trident hose is really easy to move between your tank and e.g. a cup of water from your other tank(s), and measures on demand, so it works well for multiple systems, although when it gets “surprised” by a very different sample it will re-test and use more reagent/time. I imagine it would be a lot harder to move the mindstream to sample a second tank.

 

[ofzakaria]

Just got a Trident but I am not cancelling my Mindstream order (unless it doesn’t deliver well before my credit card’s 12-week purchase protection limit). The 8-week mark on my Mindstream order is coming up next week, and they are supposed to ship between 6-8 weeks of ordering, so it may not happen.

The Trident has saved me so much time and given me such new insight that I want another monitor for my other tank, but I haven’t been able to get a second Trident yet. Also testing potassium is a bummer (the Red Sea kit takes like 20 mins). I’m not sure I like the intrusiveness of the Mindstream (like having an MP40 on the tank), you can put it in the sump I guess though. The Trident hose is really easy to move between your tank and e.g. a cup of water from your other tank(s), and measures on demand, so it works well for multiple systems, although when it gets “surprised” by a very different sample it will re-test and use more reagent/time. I imagine it would be a lot harder to move the mindstream to sample a second tank.

Potassium and o2 was the biggest advantage for me. I care about k+ a lot for my sps and ad you said most kids are pain to deal with.
From there having ph, salinity and major elements testing on mindstream seem in theory a slam dunk. My ph and salinity probs never work reliably especially salinity. The fact that every month I will have new disk give me comfort and expectation that I will have stable reading on ph salinity and major elemnts.
I spend more than 100$ a month on reagents and Triton( I mainly do Triton for k and po4) for reagenta I almost change my reagents once a month cause most test kits degrade over time once opened so it's not a matter of how luch reagent I have rather when did I open the reagent.
As I said any other solution would have costed me, tested less and would have more maintenance headaches.
Let's just hope MS delivers on quality. So far online reviews seem good..

 

[ofzakaria]

FYI on ReefBot maintenance:
You need to dump waste water and refill RODI buckets about weekly.
Unless you build something making those unlimited.
You need to refill little vials of reagent when the go empty. Easy.
You need to replace a syringe and clean test chamber about every 60 tests. Easy.
Given the low duty cycle, I don't see ever touching valves/servos/pumps inside.

While reefbot look cool I think of it more of a gimmick. All these robotic precision just makes me nervous of it's long term operation..
I think the testing innovation is going away from using mechanical designs or peristaltic pumps to fit regular reagent based testings, such approachs in my openion are missing the mark on the new wave of testing methods like ionic based probs (ghl/xepta and dosteonics) or fluorescence based (mindstream) measurments.
Hopefully Soon these methods will be more commoditized and reliable.

 

[JVU]

Potassium and o2 was the biggest advantage for me. I care about k+ a lot for my sps and ad you said most kids are pain to deal with.
From there having ph, salinity and major elements testing on mindstream seem in theory a slam dunk. My ph and salinity probs never work reliably especially salinity. The fact that every month I will have new disk give me comfort and expectation that I will have stable reading on ph salinity and major elemnts.
I spend more than 100$ a month on reagents and Triton( I mainly do Triton for k and po4) for reagenta I almost change my reagents once a month cause most test kits degrade over time once opened so it's not a matter of how luch reagent I have rather when did I open the reagent.
As I said any other solution would have costed me, tested less and would have more maintenance headaches.
Let's just hope MS delivers on quality. So far online reviews seem good..

Where did you see reviews?

 

[ofzakaria]

Where did you see reviews?

Couple popping out on reef2reef, reef central and their facebook. Not much thu, few early customers.

 

[JVU]

I agree that solid-state testing like MS should be far superior to reagent-based testing, if it works reliably.

I really don’t understand the draw for ReefBot, which basically just has a robotic mechanism do old-school mediocre tests that were designed to be done by humans. Then the human goes and empties waste and refills reagents on a less frequent regular basis, (with likely additional troubleshooting occasionally), instead of just doing the tests on a regular basis. It seems like building a robot to use an abacus to do math calculations and write the answers on paper, instead of just letting the computer do the calculations directly and output the answers digitally.

 

[RandyC]

I agree that solid-state testing like MS should be far superior to reagent-based testing, if it works reliably.

I really don’t understand the draw for ReefBot, which basically just has a robotic mechanism do old-school mediocre tests that were designed to be done by humans. Then the human goes and empties waste and refills reagents on a less frequent regular basis, (with likely additional troubleshooting occasionally), instead of just doing the tests on a regular basis. It seems like building a robot to use an abacus to do math calculations and write the answers on paper, instead of just letting the computer do the calculations directly and output the answers digitally.

Reefbot would take the guessing out of your eyes doing the color matching during titration as well as minimize some potential human error (e.g. drawing too much reagent, not reading the meniscus correctly, etc.). Which theoretically should make the test results more consistent and accurate (accurate as the test kit can provide) than what you could do by hand.

The argument you’re providing could really be used for Trident as well.