Guess the Phosphate level
- Thread starter Thales
- Start date
Very nice work. Thakyou both.
I'd also note that there is no possible or asserted differentiation between metals bound to organics and those that are free as Randy Holmes- Farley explained in another thread.
jroovers
New member
Not sure I agree. Marketing can be powerful. There are a lot of additives, potions, etc. that still generate a lot sales based on less than anything but anecdotal claims and unsubstantiated theory as evidenced by this site... this company is likely to pull their fair share, science aside... not only applies to them, but many others too.
KISS :thumbsup:
[Sahin, that's not a shot at you just so we're square, but I think this is just another company making claims, amongst many others, that don't necessarily bear any real fruit, but still sucks in its fair share, just like many others, and we're all guilty of buying in at some point or another, usually earlier in our reefkeeping careers].
ormet
Just one more frag
Thales, i have a question, sort of.
I linked to the article in my local forum, a swedish one (the one Lassef also uses alot), and something odd is happening there.
The certified reference is being questioned instead of Triton labs
There are several members with economic interests in Triton Labs on that forum. They sell the tests to end customers.
I think also the fact that Triton Labs are german and Sceptical Reefkeeping is american plays a part. Swedish reefers tend to worship the german and brush off americans when it comes to reefkeeping.
It makes me annoyed that no one questions the company that want my money.
I guess the question is: how can we be sure of the reference?
I linked to the article in my local forum, a swedish one (the one Lassef also uses alot), and something odd is happening there.
The certified reference is being questioned instead of Triton labs
There are several members with economic interests in Triton Labs on that forum. They sell the tests to end customers.
I think also the fact that Triton Labs are german and Sceptical Reefkeeping is american plays a part. Swedish reefers tend to worship the german and brush off americans when it comes to reefkeeping.
It makes me annoyed that no one questions the company that want my money.
I guess the question is: how can we be sure of the reference?
Reefvet
New member
So they're biased to begin with and have a financial interest in Triton labs. Why are you concerned about their opinion ?
They do understand that the authors used 3 reference samples ?
They also understand that the authors receive no benefit from either validating or discrediting Triton labs ?
Nano sapiens
New member
Thanks for all the work getting this out. Raises a lot of questions that I hope will be addressed over the next few weeks/months.
craigbingman
New member
Thales, i have a question, sort of.
...
The certified reference is being questioned instead of Triton labs
...
I guess the question is: how can we be sure of the reference?
It is a reference material that has certified for levels of several elements.
You can read more about reference materials in general here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certified_reference_materials
The upshot is that one should be quite certain that the levels of certified elements are as described, and within the described uncertainties.
craigbingman
New member
I'm not sure exactly what you mean about raising more questions than it was able to answer. The authors sent certified reference standard to Triton, they tested it, and the authors did a good job of reporting the results. We now know a lot about how the testing went on the day that the tests were done, which is a lot more than we ever knew about how well the testing is working.
The upshot is that its working better than I anticipated. Before, I would probably not have sent samples. Now, I would certainly consider sending samples under certain circumstances, for some use cases. Overall they did fairly well on major and minor elements in seawater. The performance on some of the trace elements was perhaps not as great as one might have hoped, but it should be kept in mind that traditional colorimetric testing for a number of these elements is either extremely difficult or impossible. Most of the use cases for cadmium or lead or tin involve a qualitative answer "can I detect any of that in my tank water" and if the answer is a confident yes, then that immediately points to a problem with technical equipment. I hope that Triton be transparent about how they are responding to this article (not with a lawsuit, but rather with improved procedures) and then perhaps they will convince me to put more weight on some of their trace element analysis than I can right now.
Whether or not 5% accuracy is acceptable depends on what you want to do with the numbers. If you just want to check on calcium, magnesium and strontium levels, it is fine. If you want to recover alkalinity by calculation, it isn't nearly close enough. So how do you intend to use the values?
craigbingman
New member
The core of the article is very straightforward. The authors sent a certified sample to Triton for testing, they tested the samples, and the authors did a good job of reporting the results. Prior to reading the article, I would have been reluctant to send samples, largely because no third party had validated their method. After reading the article, I would strongly consider using this service for certain use cases.
I would hope that based on the results, Triton will let us know what they are doing differently to increase the accuracy of some of the results for trace elements.
The real question here is how do you plan to use the numbers? If you just want to know calcium, magnesium and strontium levels, then 5% accuracy is fine. Not exceptional, but fine. If you want to be able to calculate alkalinity by difference, then the concentration of the most abundant major ions would need to be more accurate than 5% otherwise the calculation would be meaningless. However, for that calculation, it wouldn't make a bit of difference if the trace elements were out by 1000% because their absolute concentrations are so low as to be unimportant in the calculation.
Similarly, variances much higher than 5% might be acceptable for trace element work, when you are really just looking for a presence or absence test. If there is detectable lead or cadmium or tin in your water, then it is time to start looking for some decaying technical equipment. It doesn't matter much if the deviation is 500% from the actual value, as long as you are able to spot the problem. Only when the deviations become so large as to provide either false positive or false negative detection results are they problematic for this purpose.
So how do you plan to use the values?
acesq
Premium Member
I personally only plan to use the test for troubleshooting issues that I may have in my tank and not for making minor adjustments of trace elements. I simply want to know whether I can trust the the test if it reports slightly high copper or aluminum or other elements known to be harmful to corals and fish which I can then attribute as the cause of an issue I might be having. I assume that is is useful for that purpose at least as to those elements where the accuracy is reasonable.
As a for instance, my SPS were experiencing STN. I was hoping that a Triton test would reveal something out of whack that I could correct. The test reported that all of the elements were within the acceptable range except aluminum which had a concentration of 47.73 ug/l which Triton reported should be 2 ug/l, a deviation of 45 ug/l, and lithium which others had also reported to be quite high but was not believed to be deleterious to our captive reef creatures. After reading that ceramic media might leach aluminum, and concerned that the elevated aluminum might be causing the stress to my corals, I removed one of two 4x4x8 marine pure blocks, changed 50+% of the water, waited a month and retested. (I also changed all of my ro/di filters, which had not been changed in three or four months.) My corals almost immediately responded quite well. A month later I sent in another test and it reported that the aluminum had actually increased to 62.51 ug/l. I'm not sure whether I can conclude (a) that aluminum in a range up to 62.51 ug/l has no deleterious affect on my corals in my tank (b) that marine pure ceramic media does not leach aluminum or (c) anything at all with respect to aluminum. Thoughts?
What I have concluded, but without any test results to back it up (making it little more than a guess) is that my ro/di filters had been exhausted, allowing chloramine and perhaps other compounds, into my make up water and that I need to change those filters much more frequently.
I plan to send in another water sample to Triton shortly and every few months in the future just to keep track of my water quality. I like data even if I don't always know what to do with it. :rollface: I will read the results with Table 1 in hand and convert the reported values to a range based on the accuracy and standard deviations stated in the table. Is that a reasonable approach?
craigbingman
New member
I think that this exchange is very instructive. You did water testing, you thought that you might have identified an issue, you took a very non-specific but generally helpful remedial action (large water exchange) and things look better. Unfortunately, after the remedial action, the parameter you were monitoring went in the "wrong" direction. I'm not sure we need Triton testing to know that when things look funky in our systems, a large partial water exchange can be helpful and it was.
With respect to aluminum levels that you observed: The reference linked below indicates that the sum of all soluble aluminum species is around 2 micromolar (50-60 ppm) in a seawater matrix at typical sea surface values. It does get more soluble at lower pH values (up to 6.5 micromolar or 170 ppm at pH 7.5)
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S0001437011020147#page-1
So your aquarium water appears to be saturated with aluminum, which would not be totally unexpected if you had alumina in the system. But what is the basis for the recommendation of 2 ug/L aluminum? We don't know. If there is data behind it, it would be really interesting to see. If it is arbitrary, that would be nice to know too.
swk
New member
Incidentally, I did a triton test on my 75 gal sps system that was floundering at the time. Pieces were not doing well, not growing, poor PE, Etc.
I was hoping the results would indicate some sort of magic bullet, that some metal or trace element was extremely out of whack (yes, scientific term). My results were actually quite a shock - it was almost perfect. I only had 2 yellows on the whole dang thing. Magnesium was 50ppm lower than their low cutoff, and iodine was a bit low as well. Other than those 2 parameters, the test was about as good as one could hope for. The resulting comments on my thread even had a comment that it was "the cleanest test seen to date". Meanwhile, one look at my tank would tell a different story all together.
I have since switched salts, had the tank turn into a sps growing machine and have finally had the success I was always looking for. I will be sending in another test here next month and am curious to see what the results are. I switched to plain ol' IO - so if my tank follows suit I anticipate some values being out of whack.
Just goes to show that a "successful" tank on paper, to tritons standards, is FAR from a guarantee of success.
I was hoping the results would indicate some sort of magic bullet, that some metal or trace element was extremely out of whack (yes, scientific term). My results were actually quite a shock - it was almost perfect. I only had 2 yellows on the whole dang thing. Magnesium was 50ppm lower than their low cutoff, and iodine was a bit low as well. Other than those 2 parameters, the test was about as good as one could hope for. The resulting comments on my thread even had a comment that it was "the cleanest test seen to date". Meanwhile, one look at my tank would tell a different story all together.
I have since switched salts, had the tank turn into a sps growing machine and have finally had the success I was always looking for. I will be sending in another test here next month and am curious to see what the results are. I switched to plain ol' IO - so if my tank follows suit I anticipate some values being out of whack.
Just goes to show that a "successful" tank on paper, to tritons standards, is FAR from a guarantee of success.
Have you sent any frags off yet? Would love to know how the frags are doing ?
ormet
Just one more frag
I am not concerned as much as irked by the fact that the general population on that forum might believe the conspiracy theories about a smear campaign touted by resellers of Triton Lab tests.
Some claims made by resellers and also in an official statement from Triton Labs:
2% nh3 in the solution completely invalidates the test and is fraudulent behaviour.
The test is not sea water and Triton labs equipment is calibrated for sea water.
Smal traces of pollution in the most common elements will have big impacts on elements with the smallest amount measured.
Thanks for the link.
Thales
Active member
Thales, i have a question, sort of.
I linked to the article in my local forum, a swedish one (the one Lassef also uses alot), and something odd is happening there.
The certified reference is being questioned instead of Triton labs
There are several members with economic interests in Triton Labs on that forum. They sell the tests to end customers.
I think also the fact that Triton Labs are german and Sceptical Reefkeeping is american plays a part. Swedish reefers tend to worship the german and brush off americans when it comes to reefkeeping.
It makes me annoyed that no one questions the company that want my money.
I guess the question is: how can we be sure of the reference?
It is all in the article - we talk about the standard and how and why it was used and provide evidence for why it was used. I worry mostly that some people aren't actually reading the article, but are instead reacting to what they think, incorrectly, the article states.
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Thales
Active member
Here is a reasonable discussion
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2483278&highlight=triton
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2483278&highlight=triton
Reefvet
New member
Well from what you're describing they clearly are trying to discredit the reference but the objections they raise are covered in the article.
It's unfortunate that they feel the need to take this tact in defending their service rather than coming forward with more information about their 'proprietary' methods.
