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Worth switching to ABC Reagents? Any issues?

Chromis said:
So I noticed the generic (although still expensive at $70 for 2-month supply) ABC reagent bottles are taller and narrower so the Trident tubing is too short to reach the bottom. Plus the three bottles don’t all fit in the Trident drawer. Are we meant to use them to refill the existing Trident bottles? I’m not happy about doing extra work to clean and refill a bottle just because they can’t right-size their product packaging. Not buying again.
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That's why you need this!!!


@thesassyindian

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H2OPlayar said:
I have my old trident bottles for this reason and refill as needed. Also, getting the concentrated gallons of solution was a great deal. I have been happy with them all around.
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Have you been through a gallon yet - is the reagent still ok to the end? How often do you find you need to recalibrate with this method?
 
Chromis said:
So I noticed the generic (although still expensive at $70 for 2-month supply) ABC reagent bottles are taller and narrower so the Trident tubing is too short to reach the bottom. Plus the three bottles don’t all fit in the Trident drawer. Are we meant to use them to refill the existing Trident bottles? I’m not happy about doing extra work to clean and refill a bottle just because they can’t right-size their product packaging. Not buying again.
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Yes you need to use the trident original bottles. No need to clean the bottles. Just top off. I been doing this for close to 2 years now never cleaned or rinsed the bottles. Simply when reagents are running low top them off.
 
Chromis said:
Have you been through a gallon yet - is the reagent still ok to the end? How often do you find you need to recalibrate with this method?
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Never recalibrated, solution stays good for a very long time. There was a video made by someone who knows more chemistry than I about how the reagents don't really expire.
 
As a non-trident owner, why aren't you all just connecting the trident to the ginormous reagent bottles directly? Can't you just buy a longer line of tubing and drill a hole in a lid? Worst case mod a VOSS water bottle ala what people do for dosing.
 
richiev said:
As a non-trident owner, why aren't you all just connecting the trident to the ginormous reagent bottles directly? Can't you just buy a longer line of tubing and drill a hole in a lid? Worst case mod a VOSS water bottle ala what people do for dosing.
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Haha that's exactly what I was designing :)
The idea is to place the Trident internals above three threaded mates for VOSS bottles.
Not sure how photosensitive / unstable the reagents are though, so might need to plasti-dip the outside of the bottles and leave a narrow vertical window to read reagent level.
 
Hmm... I did a quick test with a Voss bottle. Looks like the peristaltic pump in the Trident is not able to pull in reagents from the bottom 1/3rd of the 800ml Voss bottle (and yes, I have an air hole in the bottle cap).
Maybe I have a leak in the tubing somewhere (?).
 
thesassyindian said:
Hmm... I did a quick test with a Voss bottle. Looks like the peristaltic pump in the Trident is not able to pull in reagents from the bottom 1/3rd of the 800ml Voss bottle (and yes, I have an air hole in the bottle cap).
Maybe I have a leak in the tubing somewhere (?).
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I think you lose the hydrostatic pressure of the liquid that's gone by that point, and/or your tubing is worn out.
 
There’s a guy on socalireefs that uses soda syrup bladders. Let me see if I can find the thread.
Here ya go.

XXXL Reagent

[emoji445] I like big jugs and I can not lie, all you other reefs can’t deny![emoji445] Ok i bought the gallon reagent kits from ABCreagents.com Well after José had pointed out that air is the enemy of reagents I got to thinking, “how can I eliminate air from getting to the reagents?” So I a...
www.socalireefs.com
 
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thesassyindian said:
Haha that's exactly what I was designing :)
The idea is to place the Trident internals above three threaded mates for VOSS bottles.
Not sure how photosensitive / unstable the reagents are though, so might need to plasti-dip the outside of the bottles and leave a narrow vertical window to read reagent level.
Click to expand...
I like this idea because the Voss bottles are tall and narrow (and heavy glass so less likely to tip) and if the trident can sit atop the bottles, it can squeeze into tank cabinetry more easily. I would also love a similar solution but hooking directly to the ABC gallon jugs… because… lazy.
 
Are you sure you have no leaks on the connections? Even cheap peristaltic pumps in my experience can pull through multiple feet of tubing. When I've had issues drawing in it's usually been one of my joints has a very small leak. Usually I can tell by letting it sit for awhile and you'll see the liquid/bubble boundary move, which implies it's not holding pressure properly.
 
Chromis said:
I like this idea because the Voss bottles are tall and narrow (and heavy glass so less likely to tip) and if the trident can sit atop the bottles, it can squeeze into tank cabinetry more easily. I would also love a similar solution but hooking directly to the ABC gallon jugs… because… lazy.
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Fwiw this is basically what I do with reagents/dosing liquids. Drill out a little hole, shove the tube in there. I usually stick a bit of cotton material around the hole just to act as a bit of a buffer against evaporation.

With VOSS bottles I've installed a push connect fitting. I put a thin acrylic piping cut to length on the inside (Neptune in SJ has the piping, but Ace hardware probably does too). On the outside I usually put 2cm of hard RO tubing with one of those air hose connectors attached to that.

The acrylic tube makes sure I can get the liquid from the bottom. Quick connect makes it easy to take apart. RO tubing ensures I don't get a leak at the joint. Works well enough for me. Not really sure it's better than the ones where I've just drilled a hole and shoved the tubing in.

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I don't have a Trident though.
 
richiev said:
As a non-trident owner, why aren't you all just connecting the trident to the ginormous reagent bottles directly? Can't you just buy a longer line of tubing and drill a hole in a lid? Worst case mod a VOSS water bottle ala what people do for dosing.
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Because I don't have the space in the cabinet, and the length of the tube I remember matters. But maybe that was the length of the input tube.
 
As I recall the the length of tubing (friction resistance) and fluid level height (gravity resistance) matter for the Trident to be (and stay) calibrated correctly. This is explicitly called out with respect to the sample tubing, and I’d assume it could be the same for the reagent tubing since they all use the same types of pumps and careful input calibration. With that in mind, tall reagent bottles where the fluid level will change a lot over time would be a concern to me.
 
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