Seneye reporting 14 ppm Ammonia!

[Starvin Marvin]

Hey everyone,

My Seneye is telling me I have 14 ppm ammonia as shown in the screenshot. Also the pH is high and the temperature is low, could that affect my ammonia?

Also should I do a small water change to bring it down to under 12ppm or so?

How about reducing my pH? I was thinking of dumping baking powder in because baking soda is supposed to raise pH so it must be that baking powder lowers it. But I don't know how much to add.

Also my temperature is a little low, even though I have 2 heaters.

I also got this as an alert by Seneye so I need to hurry and do something or the tank might crash. !!!

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Just kidding of course about all the conclusion jumping and bad science above, but I really did get this Alert in my email and when I checked the iPhone App and the Seneye Connect computer app, it all matched.

A simple unplug of the USB and plug back in, and it fixed itself back to where it should be.

Just thought I would share because even though the Seneye is an extremely accurate Ammonia and pH monitor and a cheap PAR meter that I am glad I have purchased, it obviously has potential flaws and if the numbers can be this far off, so much so that it's immediately recognizable as a software glitch, then it also follows that it could be reporting values just a couple of believable but alarming point off the mark, if it bugged out to a less extreme degree.

Keep it in the back of your mind. Errors with test kits are also easy to make, but these "devices" can cause complacency, similar to a pH probe that is neglected and become uncalibrated for months, gradually misleading the user into making adjustments and dosing things that are not really required.

My suggestion: Own and use a Seneye. But not to the exclusion of other indications of pH and Temperature.


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[bertoni]

Hmm, that's not very encouraging. I hope it's better behaved for most people.

 

[jason2459]

I've been very happy with my seneye and found interesting the rise and fall daily of ammonia. Par meter is ok and good for tracking but it never was able to detect the Kelvin of my leds.

Plus, it basically forces a recalibration every month with a new slide. It would be nice if they progressed further with this like the mindstream but keep the slide prices down. Get Ca and Alk would be a big step and one several are coming out with in the next year.

 

[jason2459]

I posted about my initial experiences with the seneye in my long running tank jounal. Here's the post

I picked up a used seneye and have it running now for the last couple days. Just something to play with and primarily got it for the par meter on it. I haven't tested that out yet.

Temp has been reading consistently about 2 degrees F lower then my Apex and digital thermometer I have all next to each other. pH has been pretty well tracking and the same as the Apex. Temp isn't a big deal as I can mentally note the differences and calibrate in my head. Plus, I have many things checking and controlling temp (Apex, Ranco, built in heater thermostats, digital thermometer, and now the seneye.)

The Seneye also tracks ammonia. Many say this is only useful for new tanks or QT and many established tank owners dismiss the seneye as not very useful. About 2 years ago I think it was my tank took a turn for the worse due to some mold mildew cleaner spray getting into it (not by me...). It lead to practically all inverts dieing and several fish deaths which I think was most likely caused by ammonia spikes from the invert deaths.

If the seneye was monitoring it would have alerted me to the tank going downhill and I may have been able to save some of those fish before the ammonia spiked to high. Probably not the inverts.

Now I don't think manual ammonia or nitrite testing is very useful at all for the established tank but the constant monitoring from the seneye and it's cloud capabilities of alerting you via email and text I found could be very useful. I hope I never need it again but it's like insurance isn't it especially since the seneye requires slides to be replaced every 35 days to monitor pH and ammonia. Plus side, is that each slide renewal is recalibrating itself.

I've also flound it very interesting to see my ammonia goes up to 0.01ppb and back down to 0.001ppb every day with a steady up swing through out the day to midnightish and s steady down swing after that. At some point I will look at the trends and see what it coordinates with.

Some side by side screen shots of the two.

Would be nice to see seneye develop this further like the mindstream and keep costs down for the consumables.

 

[djbon]

Does it reads light temperature in kelvin as well?. I know it does shows PAR value. The reason I asked is my LFS have it in the shelves for ages, and getting it now will be 4x cheaper compared to buying fresh unit from the internet

 

[jason2459]

I wasn't able to get a kelvin reading from my leds. I don't know if anyone else has. Par worked just fine and good enough for tracking. According to BRS it's better at led par readings then the neptune par monitor which is the older 200 series apogee. The newest apogee 500 series should be better then both.

 

[Starvin Marvin]

Hey as an update to this - I received a personal email from Seneye Support (out of the blue; I did not contact them) telling me they noticed my unusually high readings and wanted to troubleshoot what possible causes there could be for it, so they could address a possible software bug or make an allowance for a hardware issue on my end.


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[Breadman03]

Hey as an update to this - I received a personal email from Seneye Support (out of the blue; I did not contact them) telling me they noticed my unusually high readings and wanted to troubleshoot what possible causes there could be for it, so they could address a possible software bug or make an allowance for a hardware issue on my end.


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That speaks well for the company.

 

[canadianeh]

with Seneye is much cheaper than Apex, is Seneye a better deal overall to monitor ammonia, ph, temperature, alk, cal, and mag then?

 

[jason2459]

with Seneye is much cheaper than Apex, is Seneye a better deal overall to monitor ammonia, ph, temperature, alk, cal, and mag then?

Seneye is purely a monitor at this point. The Apex is a monitor and controller that can take what's being monitored and apply some logic to turn things on and off or ramp up and down. It can also do much more then that.

Neither the Apex or seneye can monitor Alk, Ca, and Mg at this time. The Apex can not monitor Ammonia but can monitor a lot more things.

 

[canadianeh]

Seneye is purely a monitor at this point. The Apex is a monitor and controller that can take what's being monitored and apply some logic to turn things on and off or ramp up and down. It can also do much more then that.

Neither the Apex or seneye can monitor Alk, Ca, and Mg at this time. The Apex can not monitor Ammonia but can monitor a lot more things.

ahh I see. It looks like seneye reef is a better choice if I want to monitor ph, ammonia, temperature, PAR, and LUX then?
Do I need to connect it to a computer 2/7 to work? does it come with wifi?

 

[jason2459]

ahh I see. It looks like seneye reef is a better choice if I want to monitor ph, ammonia, temperature, PAR, and LUX then?
Do I need to connect it to a computer 2/7 to work? does it come with wifi?

If all you want to to is monitor and be alerted and that's all you want to test for then it's a perfect choice. It has to be plugged into either a computer or a power adapter or their wifi webserver. If plugged into a usb power adapter you would not get alerting and only get what it logged until you plug it into a computer or the wifi webserver.

 

[canadianeh]

If all you want to to is monitor and be alerted and that's all you want to test for then it's a perfect choice. It has to be plugged into either a computer or a power adapter or their wifi webserver. If plugged into a usb power adapter you would not get alerting and only get what it logged until you plug it into a computer or the wifi webserver.

ahh my computer is pretty far away from my tank, and the wifi server is like $200 to add. I have to think about it.

 

[thepotoo]

I have a Seneye and I would skip it in favor of the Apex or a DIY Arduino solution if what you are about is monitoring. I bought it for the PAR meter and it works well for that.

 

[jason2459]

I have a Seneye and I would skip it in favor of the Apex or a DIY Arduino solution if what you are about is monitoring. I bought it for the PAR meter and it works well for that.

Yep, I bought it for the par meter too. And I also would choose the Apex over the Seneye. But I quickly realized how interesting and useful the ammonia monitoring was and will always make sure I have an active slide in place when ever I go out of town.

 

[jason2459]

Oh man, I just did the software upgrade to v2 for the SCA. It's awesome. It added out of water alerting and along with PAR and LUX it includes now PUR as well. That's an awesome value.

Who knows if its accurate but with BRS testing the PAR readings being better at LEDs then the older 200 series Apogee and the newer Apogee 500 series being slightly better the seneye is a great value just for being a light meter.

Going to put this in my return section now for a backup ATO has failed alert.