Hanna checker for Nitrate update

zzz111 said:
Hi Joe, could you ask them why they can't replace the powder packs with some liquid reagent? Asking because I remember an Italian reefer once posted saying folks in europe use a liquid reagent from some other vendor with hanna testers, worked fine.
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I use my own home made liquid reagents with hanna phosphate and hanna phosphorus meters, they work fine and I have much more stable results with them than with hanna's dry reagents which are inconsistent. This is a standard ascorbic acid - ammonium molybdate method (described in many sources in internet), four solutions: ascorbic acid, sulfur acid, Potassium antimony tartrate and ammonium molybdate (everuthing except sulfur acid are from ebay). Sounds complicate but actually not, and I'm not a chemist. Extremely cheap.
 
That does look like an interesting approach. As a DIY project, it might be a lot of fun and quite useful for measuring nitrate. I'm not sure how well it'd measure on the low end, though. They tested down to only 2.2 ppm or so.
 
I've been looking into the DIY Nitrate Photometer myself but haven't received a response back from the Prof Pearce if the photometer would read the color accurately for existing Test Kit Reagent , like from Red Sea. the cost of the reagents on the nitrate.com website seems fairly high.

Has any one even tried to build this yet?
 
At the least, you'd have to make your own calibration curve for the device. I doubt that the other reagents would have the same light absorption characteristics.
 
Too bad the Mindstream monitor I signed up to Beta Test isn't out yet. I wished they would include a Saltwater specific configuration so we can have Alk, Ca, Mg, Nitrates, Salinity, PH, PO4, on a realtime access.

The Hanna Nitrate Photometer would have been the cheaper alternative if it worked with saltwater.
 
Honestly for the alk and phos checkers, since they said its just a simple programming change for DKH to show up, i almost wonder why they don't just offer it either way? it can't be that big of a change. And I bet the ones showing DKH would sell better.

even if it is just a calculator or paper and a few seconds, its still 1 step you wouldn't NEED to worry about. Funny how people complain about the extra minute or so for a calcium checker test, but then pass on something that saves you time for no penalty whatsoever.
 
Scubajoe1 said:
you do not want to use separate vials. If there are any differences in the glass from one vial to the other this will add or subtract from your reading. Just saying.
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Actually, if you get away from those expensive Hanna vials and buy a dozen three dram vials with lids (!) for < $20 through Amazon, you can find two vials that look the same to the Checker. In my batch, I found many "identical" pairs.
 
I had a long chat with a Hanna Rep about the Nitrate testing. My question to them was the typical one of why don't you make a Nitrate Test Kit and he responded that he knew it was a popular request but they had tried but there were issues and they were not happy with the results.

As an EE I asked him what was the technical problem, the typical Nitrate kits use a color change and Hanna kits use a color change so whats the issue. He told me that they only can read within a small spectrum and most kits go from a wide color spectrum. For example API going from Yellow to Red so he said they cannot read such a broad color change using the photometers for just a specific wavelength.

At that point I chuckled and said to him, we are not interested in what happens after 10ppm what we want to know is all in that yellow region. So why not build a ULR Nitrate reader that maxes out at 10ppm. I then forwarded him some of Randy's info on ideal parameters and he got back to me and said this could work, he had no idea we only needed to read such low values and he was going to talk to the top brass and present them with the information I provided.

So fingers crossed guys, they might come out with something fairly soon.

Rob
 
RobbyG

Well put. It amazes me that a company that supplies products to a niche clientele would not have a better understanding of their needs. I hope that this goes somewhere as I prefer the digital results over other test kits as many of us do.
 
JOEYRM7 said:
RobbyG

Well put. It amazes me that a company that supplies products to a niche clientele would not have a better understanding of their needs. I hope that this goes somewhere as I prefer the digital results over other test kits as many of us do.
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Thanks.
I think they kept looking at other popular kits that read up to 80ppm and above and thought that was what was needed. I explained that any serious Aquarium owner is looking at below 1ppm. I said if we ever need to read past 10ppm we will buy a cheapo API kit or dilute the water and do the math. What we do need is a digital readout for Ultra low Nitrate because these color wheels and charts are just not cutting it.

Rob
 
Could we also ask them to have the last reading displayed when the reader is woken from sleep? How often have missed the reading because I was concentrating on another test. Or make them beep when the result is ready. Or put Bluetooth into them and sync to my phone ;)

And why are the vials round?
 
RobbyG said:
I had a long chat with a Hanna Rep about the Nitrate testing. My question to them was the typical one of why don't you make a Nitrate Test Kit and he responded that he knew it was a popular request but they had tried but there were issues and they were not happy with the results.

As an EE I asked him what was the technical problem, the typical Nitrate kits use a color change and Hanna kits use a color change so whats the issue. He told me that they only can read within a small spectrum and most kits go from a wide color spectrum. For example API going from Yellow to Red so he said they cannot read such a broad color change using the photometers for just a specific wavelength.

At that point I chuckled and said to him, we are not interested in what happens after 10ppm what we want to know is all in that yellow region. So why not build a ULR Nitrate reader that maxes out at 10ppm. I then forwarded him some of Randy's info on ideal parameters and he got back to me and said this could work, he had no idea we only needed to read such low values and he was going to talk to the top brass and present them with the information I provided.

So fingers crossed guys, they might come out with something fairly soon.

Rob
Click to expand...
Is there any way we can contact Hanna to support this request? I spoke with them and they explained to me the same about the difficulty of making the kit. I never was advised it is the range.. But I agree, and ulr would be awesome!

And if I, at least can support the request, that would be awesome!
 
Honestly, their explanation doesn't make a lot of sense. The reduction of nitrate to nitrite and detection via the Griess reagent is straightforward and works quite well in a seawater matrix. And it's been the standard method in oceanography for decades. The UVmax for the diazonium salt is around 550 nm, which is easy from an electronics viewpoint.

But then again, this is the same company where some goofball thought it was wise to save a few batteries by setting an auto-off timer of 3 minutes. I understand they've lengthened it to 10 in some of the newer meters, but it's still a very inconvenient "convenience feature".

I can assure you that I'd be very unhappy with a company that made a lab-grade spectrophotometer that went "off" after a few minutes of inactivity to save a few hours of lifetime on a deuterium or tungsten lamp.
 
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