Trident -- Hands on

[CrabbyCrabs]

That is a great feature. Glad they thought of that. Makes me want it more. I know you do auto water changes daily. Do you see any issues with those of us that do weekly or every other week water changes?

[SuncrestReef]

29 minutes ago, CrabbyCrabs said:

That is a great feature. Glad they thought of that. Makes me want it more. I know you do auto water changes daily. Do you see any issues with those of us that do weekly or every other week water changes?

The only concern would be if your new saltwater parameters are way off from your tank water.  In my case, as long as my tank stays between 7.8 - 8.6 then the Trident will keep humming along to test and adjust the dosing appropriately.  Outside that range it will alert me and discontinue adjusting the dosing.  I wouldn't want to do a water change that throws off the numbers that much even without a Trident.

Edited May 21, 2019 by SuncrestReef

[MorseReef]

SuncrestReef,

This is a great write up with great pictures and documentation.  I will be watching your progress and trying to learn what i can from you.  I plan on getting an apex in the future and would also put a trident on this after that.  

Thank you for sharing your knowledge. 

[SuncrestReef]

14 minutes ago, MorseReef said:

SuncrestReef,

This is a great write up with great pictures and documentation.  I will be watching your progress and trying to learn what i can from you.  I plan on getting an apex in the future and would also put a trident on this after that.  

Thank you for sharing your knowledge. 

Thanks!  Glad you like it.  This thread is only a fraction of what I've documented for the past year on my Reefer XL 425 build thread over at R2R:   https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/suncrestreefs-red-sea-reefer-xl-425-build.358990/

[CrazyInside]

Well here’s mine all set up, only a few test in so far. Looks like I suck at manually testing and dosing haha

 

 

[SuncrestReef]

13 minutes ago, CrazyInside said:

Well here’s mine all set up, only a few test in so far. Looks like I suck at manually testing and dosing haha

Woo Hoo!  I'm not the only one in the Portland area with a Trident now.  Welcome to the exclusive club! 😎

I have to admit, I felt pretty special being the only one... 🤣

[SuncrestReef]

Today I replaced my carbon and GFO media in my reactors.  A few hours later, my Trident reported a big drop in alkalinity, from 8.23 down to 7.77.  I assumed something was wrong with the Trident, so I did some troubleshooting and ran a few manual tests that reported the same lower values than I was expecting.  After some research I learned that GFO can impact alkalinity.  This is something I never knew before, and thanks to the frequent testing by the Trident, I saw the immediate impact on my water chemistry.

All I can say is that the Trident is awesome for catching things so quickly, and I'm humbled that it taught me a lesson in this situation.

Edited May 23, 2019 by SuncrestReef

[Krux]

Sweet to see the progress.  I had one in my cart today but it sold before I could complete checkout.

 

Need some awesome LFS locally to get one in stock and give me a chance to give them my money!

[SuncrestReef]

Today my Trident warned me that Reagent A was empty:

 

 

Here's the process to replace the reagent.  Start by going into Tasks in Fusion, then follow the on screen prompts:

 

 

 

[shaywood]

Did it last the intended length of time?

[What_The_Frag]

How did you get a hold of a trident? @SuncrestReef I think I need one of these in my life. 😁

[Derbird]

Were the regent bottles full size?  Twelve days dosen't seem all that long for it to last.

[SuncrestReef]

2 hours ago, What_The_Frag said:

How did you get a hold of a trident? @SuncrestReef I think I need one of these in my life. 😁

I was lucky enough to log into BRS at 11:45pm on the release night when they were supposed to go on sale at midnight, but BRS listed them early and I snagged it. At the time they had about 60 in stock and they were gone by 11:54pm.

[What_The_Frag]

Nice! I was wondering where everyone was picking them up since they are all out of stock. 

[SuncrestReef]

1 hour ago, Derbird said:

Were the regent bottles full size?  Twelve days dosen't seem all that long for it to last.

I cranked up the testing frequency from 4 per day to 8 per day once I enabled the Trident Controlled Dosing, so I’ve been burning through the reagents at 2x normal rate.  I just didn’t want it to start dosing out of control if anything went wrong, but so far it’s been working great, so I’ll probably switch back to the 4 tests per day.

[CrazyInside]

12 hours ago, shaywood said:

Did it last the intended length of time?

Mine is set to the standard 4x per day and it’s on track for their specified timeline

[SuncrestReef]

I'm still working to smooth out my daily alk swings.  While the Trident does make small adjustments to the DOS to try to keep readings stable, it's still up to you to set the base dosing schedule.  I'm currently dosing more during the day and less at night, but I need to tweak the timing a bit more.

One thing that's really interesting is how the frequent testing really reveals the extent of daily swings due to consumption.  In the past I always tested alk each morning at 9am.  If you only look at the Trident's daily 9am readings, it looks like things are pretty stable.  But when you factor in the additional daily tests, you see how much fluctuation actually exists:

As the old saying goes...Ignorance is bliss. 🤣

[albertareef]

Well , the good news is that the total swing is between 8.0 and 8.3 so still pretty stable compare to many I’m sure.  Would be interesting to see this superimposed with your light schedule- how in sync are they?

[SuncrestReef]

30 minutes ago, albertareef said:

Well , the good news is that the total swing is between 8.0 and 8.3 so still pretty stable compare to many I’m sure.  Would be interesting to see this superimposed with your light schedule- how in sync are they?

It lines up pretty closely to the lighting schedule with a drop-off throughout the day when the lights are on:

I think I'm going to shift my dosing schedule a bit.

 

Edited June 2, 2019 by SuncrestReef

[SuncrestReef]

It looks like the changes I made to my dosing schedule yesterday are paying off:

[Willapa]

It looks like the changes I made to my dosing schedule yesterday are paying off:

What is your dosing schedule looking like now? How often and how much at each interval for Ca and Alk? I test at the same time every few days and feel like it's rock solid, but really have no clue as to what the daily variation is. You're making me think it's not that stable after all! But I dose alk every hour for about 15 hours during the lights off period. Surely that does something?!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[SuncrestReef]

34 minutes ago, Willapa said:

What is your dosing schedule looking like now? How often and how much at each interval for Ca and Alk? I test at the same time every few days and feel like it's rock solid, but really have no clue as to what the daily variation is. You're making me think it's not that stable after all! But I dose alk every hour for about 15 hours during the lights off period. Surely that does something?!
 

I reduced the amount dosed at night, increased the amount during the day, and shifted the schedule to later in the day.  My lights reach maximum intensity at 9am, but I moved the increased dosing schedule to start at 10am based on what Trident was showing in the graphs above.

From this base schedule, the Trident then micro-adjusts the amount and frequency throughout the day based on its measured readings.  Here's the actual amount dosed today from the logs:

The individual dosing frequency ranged between every 10 minutes to every 16 minutes.

My alk and calcium dosing are basically on the same schedules.

[SuncrestReef]

Over the past few days I've been fine tuning my 2-part dosing schedule based on the readings from my Trident, and now for the past 24 hours the readings have remained within +/- 0.05 dKH of my target, so I'm pretty happy with the results.  I'm just amazed at how useful the Trident is!!!

[CrazyInside]

15 minutes ago, SuncrestReef said:

Over the past few days I've been fine tuning my 2-part dosing schedule based on the readings from my Trident, and now for the past 24 hours the readings have remained within +/- 0.05 dKH of my target, so I'm pretty happy with the results.  I'm just amazed at how useful the Trident is!!!

I wonder is this could eventually be a negative. Have you’re tank so stable for a long period of time and running out of some 2 part or something that drops your alk 1-2 points. Where normally this wouldn’t be a crazy big deal might turn into a big shock for the tank. 

 

Future reefcentral headlines. “Alk drops to 7.1 and wipes tank” 😂 

[SuncrestReef]

8 minutes ago, CrazyInside said:

I wonder is this could eventually be a negative. Have you’re tank so stable for a long period of time and running out of some 2 part or something that drops your alk 1-2 points. Where normally this wouldn’t be a crazy big deal might turn into a big shock for the tank. 

 

Future reefcentral headlines. “Alk drops to 7.1 and wipes tank” 😂 

In other words, I'm turning my corals into delicate flowers that can't handle anything except the life of luxury!!! 🤣

If you read today's installment on Virtual Outputs in my Apex tutorial series, you'd see I get alerts when my 2-part containers are running low, so hopefully this won't happen.