Reef nutrition

Worth switching to ABC Reagents? Any issues?

H2OPlayar said:
$$$, and a cya for accuracy. But we are looking at trends, not absolutes for our tanks. We care if the dKh is moving, not that it is exactly 9.2 vs 9.8
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Darkxerox said:
The old chasing numbers vs. trends and observation argument still sticks
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I’d prefer both. In my experience it’s hard to know if a reading is drifting in accuracy, vs my tank is actually drifting and I need to change my dosing, or a combination of both. If it’s fairly accurate and reasonably reproducible and I can trust the numbers it’s much less aggravating.

Also if it tells me 9.2 one day and 9.8 the next I have to choose between getting worried and retesting (which I do if I trust the test) vs losing faith in it and ignoring (like I do with the conductivity probe for example).

I’ve had things slowly drift and wind up being a problem, like for example the pH probe. You can be confident it isn’t changing much per day so it feels like your trend is fine, but over time it can drift dangerously.

I think the ”cool kid” argument to not chase numbers is basically misguided. People use the straw man argument to not chase numbers down to tiny decimal places and overreact, hurting your tank. Well, ok duh. But knowing the real value for your salinity, alkalinity, temperature, etc is actually important in my opinion. If they get significantly out of range you should be chasing those numbers back to the normal range before your coral, inverts, fish are dying or showing signs of stress as seen with observation. Even doing everything right this is a challenging hobby, why not put effort into getting accurate lab values if you can?

I don’t have any experience with the knockoff ABC reagents, I’m not saying they aren’t good or anything.
 
@thesassyindian -one other thing I have learned recently when my trident was down is that over time the curvette in the chamber gets dirty which affects the optical light that detects the concentration of all three measurements. It can impact readings but if you calibrate against the solution it will measured against that.

My understanding though is to open it up about every 6 months and clean it out.

I’ll say one thing-take out a giant sps colony and watch the alk spike up!
 
JVU said:
I’d prefer both. In my experience it’s hard to know if a reading is drifting in accuracy, vs my tank is actually drifting and I need to change my dosing, or a combination of both. If it’s fairly accurate and reasonably reproducible and I can trust the numbers it’s much less aggravating.

Also if it tells me 9.2 one day and 9.8 the next I have to choose between getting worried and retesting (which I do if I trust the test) vs losing faith in it and ignoring (like I do with the conductivity probe for example).

I’ve had things slowly drift and wind up being a problem, like for example the pH probe. You can be confident it isn’t changing much per day so it feels like your trend is fine, but over time it can drift dangerously.

I think the ”cool kid” argument to not chase numbers is basically misguided. People use the straw man argument to not chase numbers down to tiny decimal places and overreact, hurting your tank. Well, ok duh. But knowing the real value for your salinity, alkalinity, temperature, etc is actually important in my opinion. If they get significantly out of range you should be chasing those numbers back to the normal range before your coral, inverts, fish are dying or showing signs of stress as seen with observation. Even doing everything right this is a challenging hobby, why not put effort into getting accurate lab values if you can?

I don’t have any experience with the knockoff ABC reagents, I’m not saying they aren’t good or anything.
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Reminds me I should calibrate my ph and salinity probe!
 
phc567 said:
If you’re not in a rush. Jonas the owner is on telegrams live streams. He will announce a sale for viewers. It’s like 20-25% off. He’s a very cool guy.
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Yes jonus and I work together on sales, and I post them on my instagram when we do a sale through his website. And yes I have all the abc on tap at the shop, just bring in your empty bottles and fill up, it’s $25 for a 2 month kit. As far as calibrating, I don’t trust calibration solutions, I calibrate with tank water based on salifert tests. I trust the consistent accuracy of salifert. Salifert is also consistently inaccurate, meaning that if you’re getting a 9.3 alk reading it’s actually about 8.3. That’s the main reason I kicked my alk up on all my systems from 8.5 to 9.5.
Come through and fill up y’all!!!!
 
Dunno if you guys know or not. Jonas is a chemist. He made his own solution. He’s a 1 man show. He tested his 3 year old solution against his new batch and the results are the same. So expire date is past 3 years.
I’ve been using his solution for about a year or so. But there’s guys in so cal that have been using his solution since the beginning like 3-4 years ago with no problems.
 
my trident is always off by at least 1 point, after the 3rd year im having nothing but problums, right now i have the green led i cant get rid of, and the testing is off but i mainly use it as a reference anyway
 
Spsfreak1981 said:
my trident is always off by at least 1 point, after the 3rd year im having nothing but problums, right now i have the green led i cant get rid of, and the testing is off but i mainly use it as a reference anyway
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Needs all the tubes and the manifold cleaned. Then calibrate with aquarium water. Test with a manual test kit. Adjust your calibration to the manual numbers. See if that helps.
 
Spsfreak1981 said:
my trident is always off by at least 1 point, after the 3rd year im having nothing but problums, right now i have the green led i cant get rid of, and the testing is off but i mainly use it as a reference anyway
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Have you sent in for service? Apparently we’re supposed to keep the shipping box and send for service every… year?
 
bp123987 said:
Have you sent in for service? Apparently we’re supposed to keep the shipping box and send for service every… year?
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I was talking to @under_water_ninja about this since I've seen with similar equipment like blood gas analyzers there's usually a full tubing rebuild preventative maintenance annually. I think Neptune recommends 18-24 months, but depending on your testing frequency, this could be why so many people see changes over time as the tubing and heads wear out.
 
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.
 
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 - I have heard that they require you to use the original Neptune bottles. Hope they are able to source the correct form factor. But for a 2x cost difference, I will suck it up and put in the extra work :p
 
under_water_ninja said:
Yes jonus and I work together on sales, and I post them on my instagram when we do a sale through his website. And yes I have all the abc on tap at the shop, just bring in your empty bottles and fill up, it’s $25 for a 2 month kit. As far as calibrating, I don’t trust calibration solutions, I calibrate with tank water based on salifert tests. I trust the consistent accuracy of salifert. Salifert is also consistently inaccurate, meaning that if you’re getting a 9.3 alk reading it’s actually about 8.3. That’s the main reason I kicked my alk up on all my systems from 8.5 to 9.5.
Come through and fill up y’all!!!!
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Wait is this true for salifert alkalinity? I’ve been trying to trend my alkalinity and increase it slowly to mid 7s but is it always 1 point lower? Lol
 
thesassyindian said:
Yes - I have heard that they require you to use the original Neptune bottles. Hope they are able to source the correct form factor. But for a 2x cost difference, I will suck it up and put in the extra work :p
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I get it but for me the whole point of the Trident was supposed to be less work. Plus they don’t include a calibration sample. Since the bottles don’t fit in the Trident anyway they could have doubled the reagent volume so I can change them half as often and made an even better product.
 
Chromis said:
I get it but for me the whole point of the Trident was supposed to be less work. Plus they don’t include a calibration sample. Since the bottles don’t fit in the Trident anyway they could have doubled the reagent volume so I can change them half as often and made an even better product.
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This is tickling my brain cells. I might consider designing a 3D printed case for the Trident that holds the ABC reagent bottles.
 
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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