Trident NP is it worth it
- Thread starter PhotoSniper
- Start date
RandyC
Supporting Member
Depends. Some people dose lanthanum chloride for phosphate reduction. Others use sodium nitrate or potassium nitrate to increase nitrates in system. While it may not likely be as disastrous as say dumping a liter of 2-part in at once, it’s not still desirable.
RandyC
Supporting Member
You almost convinced me to buy automated testers, since I would throw money at disaster prevention (or detection). Specifically with my 17-day summer vacation planning already underway...
So this is a great point you already made previously when this same topic came up in another post, and I remember you did even before you made it again, and thought about these benefits.
But are there no other ways to do this with more reliable equipment in many cases? A great opportunity to explore this.
Going through your scenarios.
1. dosers failing on two part / 2-part containers empty: For alk, this should be visible through the PH testing. CA would be a blindspot but it would also take a while to materialize unless you have a fully stocked SPS tank. So automated CA testing has some merit. I wonder though if the Hydros sole dosing pump would be a better way to be notified when this happens.
2. Your kalk reactor just completely drained into the sump: This should be immediately detectable by a PH swing. No additional tester is needed beyond PH monitoring unless I am missing something.
3. Feed pump stopped working on calcium reactor: I am not using one but from my generic understanding, the reactor would stop working if this happens, lowering CA over time. Same comment as under 1., and more relevant if there is very high CA consumption. However, would it not be more effective to connect the feeder pump to an automated system such as a Hydros XP8 which would alert you if the pump is no longer working?
4. Auto feeder dumped all the contents in the tank: Now this happened to me a little while ago with the AVAST, connected to a KASA wifi plug. My son accidentally tapped on the 'on' icon for the plug (we have many) when swiping away the app on a laggy Amazon Fire tablet which we use for the tank. I have noticed that this happened through an unusual ORP development. So an ORP probe seems to be a better way to detect this and similar issues. I have since connected the AVAST to a Hydros XP8 to hopefully not have this specific issue going forward.
Overall, automated testing could be a cheaper way to detect disasters, but I am not sure if it is the most reliable way to do so. That is my hypothesis so far
To each their own. In a way testing pH is automated testing, just doesn’t need reagents. However, pH could also be depressed from other things. For instance, your skimmer cup overflows and a float switch turns off your skimmer. Or your co2 scrubbing media is used up. In some setups, this could bring your pH down by 0.5. I’d rather have a more specific method to try pinpoint what’s wrong, especially if I’m not physically present.
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I definitely hear it going but it could be because of how quiet everything else is nearby. With the Neptune, you could probably wire some 0-10v LED on there to indicate if you need to see when it's going.
But I intentionally don't have it on a WiFi outlet because of this and have it controlled on the Hydros.
Pretty sure that by the time it would show up as extra N/P your tank might be toast ammonia wise.
Can you explain that?
PhotoSniper
Supporting Member
Correction: I use
Defer 002:00 Then OFF
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Alexander1312
Supporting Member
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Yes -but if it’s in the “on” position doesn’t that override whatever code you have stated?
I emptied an enormous amount of TDO pellets into my tank when I plugged the feeder into the pump outlet after a cleaning (so it was always on - emptied the entire thing).
Surprisingly I did not notice even a small increase in nutrients, and tested a couple times a day for a while. I did get a red cyano bloom…
Surprisingly I did not notice even a small increase in nutrients, and tested a couple times a day for a while. I did get a red cyano bloom…
PhotoSniper
Supporting Member
As long as you have
Fallback OFF
Set OFF
The Defer statement turns off the manual override.
RandyC
Supporting Member
Mature tanks with large coral colonies can usually process quite a bit more ammonia/nitrites/nitrates than one normally expects. My old 6x3x1’ tank with about 80 acro colonies took a lot of effort to get nitrates to 5.
Do you have the control type as a specific type? I was just trying this with my refugiim light and it failed to turn off after two minutes when set to on. I had copied the code accordingly.
I do a max off for things like my return pump and skimmer since I sometimes turn them off manually too.
And this for apex. Not sure if hydros operates differently