Trident Calibration Problems

ariellemermaid · Sep 3, 2023

I’ve been running 2 Tridents for a few years now with very few issues aside from clearing the occasional clog.

Recently, one of my Tridents developed a clog in the black hub which I cleared (I’m not getting any test failures now).

The issue now is that my Alk readings are 11.9 when I’m running 8. I’ve done many prime’s and calibrations. I calibrate it back to 8 according to my test kits, but then the very next scheduled combined test results in the 11.9 range. It’s worth noting that my readings are very consistent aside from the calibration values.

So, any ideas on what’s going on? Trident was working perfectly with the same reagent bottles before the clog. Ca and Mg values are all correct.

Gtinnel · Sep 3, 2023

Are you calibrating it with your tank water? If so I had the same thing happen a while back. My assumption was that if I calibrate with my tank water and then test immediately after calibration it should read my tank as the calibrated value, but it didn’t. I was also trying to adjust my alkalinity by a relatively large amount (1 or 2 dKh I think). My guess is that the calibration won’t allow for a large change at a time, so the next time I calibrated my trident I changed the value by a smaller amount and it worked the way it thought it should. It took me several calibrations to get the value where I wanted it.

ariellemermaid · Sep 3, 2023

Gtinnel said:
Are you calibrating it with your tank water? If so I had the same thing happen a while back. My assumption was that if I calibrate with my tank water and then test immediately after calibration it should read my tank as the calibrated value, but it didn’t. I was also trying to adjust my alkalinity by a relatively large amount (1 or 2 dKh I think). My guess is that the calibration won’t allow for a large change at a time, so the next time I calibrated my trident I changed the value by a smaller amount and it worked the way it thought it should. It took me several calibrations to get the value where I wanted it.

Interesting. I have had that thought. Maybe 8 to 12 is too big of a leap for the Trident. I wouldn’t have thought about “calibrating” in increments. But yeah I’ve always calibrated to tank water on both of my tanks; using an outside solution IMO just introduces more variables.

Coolcasino · Sep 3, 2023

This happened to mine. I was told by Neptune that large gap in readings kicks in a safety. Like there's no way the reading should by that higher or lower than the last test result so it gives a guess. Even if you calibrate. Remember the trident is designed to use the calibration solution so it doesn't know that your tank water is actually that. So it doesn't know that the high reading is incorrect. Just that the last test result was X.XX and the next should be sorta in that range. At the end I was told to do a master reset of the trident so that those readings would delete themselves. It worked.

ariellemermaid · Sep 3, 2023

Coolcasino said:
This happened to mine. I was told by Neptune that large gap in readings kicks in a safety. Like there's no way the reading should by that higher or lower than the last test result so it gives a guess. Even if you calibrate. Remember the trident is designed to use the calibration solution so it doesn't know that your tank water is actually that. So it doesn't know that the high reading is incorrect. Just that the last test result was X.XX and the next should be sorta in that range. At the end I was told to do a master reset of the trident so that those readings would delete themselves. It worked.

I decided to take it apart for the 4th time and run some vinegar through the black hub just to make sure I wasn’t missing any partial clogs inside. I ran some through the line going to the vial as well and it at least got the discoloration out of the line but I don’t think it was clogged at all.

After reassembling I started to get “no sample” errors even though I could literally watch the vial fill and empty. Fixed that with a power cycle, primed ok. Then when I tried to calibrate I was right back to no sample. For the record all the lines have been flushed at this point , vial is crystal clear. With the one exception of the little segment around the pump head itself since it literally gets squeezed by rollers.

So anyway, I then took your advice and did a factory reset. It rebooted fine and the attempted calibration run showed like 8.7 until it flipped to the 7.7 I set it to. So much better than 12’s! The next Alk test ran fine with a reasonable value in the high 7’s.

We’ll see how it goes from here, but for the moment, I’ve at least had a good run of things. No clue why I was having the no sample issues when it was clearly filling and now testing. I assume it must use the same colorimetry light/sensor to check that as it does for the tests, and I’m getting good test values now.