triton: miracle or snake oil?

[hennan]

Sorry unable to send the YouTube link. Don't know why. "http://youtu.be/LPs1WCdW4y4"

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[james72]

For LPS dominant tank I will agree triton might be feasible since the corals would probably be happier under the higher nutrients environment. But for sps dominated tank, sending test sample to address the trace deficiency yet without doing water change is just a time bomb no matter how much we give chase to attain the perfect parameters. Nutrients will eventually build up to a point your expensive sps starts to deteriorate and lose colours or stn/rtn.

Dilution is still the best Solution IMHO.

Cheers,

James

[hennan]

Here you are, manage to get the link....it's a long video though...

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[surreal1228]

What is benchmark of good result of triton water test ? Does it Try to tune elements same as sea water ? If so we just wc nsw liao loh. Whats the point to get the super curve path ?

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[hennan]

Yeap. It tries to tune elements same as sea water. For myself, I have a big tank and I used to buy many bags of nsw, just to change 10%. After switch to Triton, I don't know need to do this anymore.

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[hennan]

Paiseh, typo error. "I don't need to do this anymore"

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[Aquareef123]

I personally started out with triton and used it for a good 6 months. I would say it works; and not having to do water changes was a very convenient benefit. However, my experience was, as mentioned by many above, the coral do survive, but they really don't thrive much. Being quite a "type A"/OCD kind of person, I have to say that I did feel extremely liberated when I took the leap to conventional dosing/water change, and I actually see a significant improvement in growth/colour as well. Triton does give you rather stable conditions (though not optimal) which allowed me to have a good start to reefing as it did allow me some time to slowly adjust and understand how a marine environment actually worked. So, many of the initial teething/running in issues could be sorted out and the tank stabilized before I had to actually fuss about each individual element/parameter. Personally, I had no regrets using Triton. I am saying that its a feasible method that actually works, but if you want to have more control over your tank or want to move on to more advanced/difficult coral, then it wouldn't be as suitable. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My situation is very similar to bro Marc. I restarted my tank beginning of this year after taking a break from reefing for almost 5 years. I started with a LPS tank in mind and Triton offered me a very good stable platform to begin with. My intervention into the tank was minimal thanks to triton and I feel that this system is really good for any beginners who do not know much about reefing to start almost immediately. As time goes by, I gained more confidence and grew more greedy. I started to deviate from my original goal of LPS and started venture into the dark side. When that happened, my kh and cal consumption went through the roof and for a 1500L tank, it became rather expensive to run triton alone. Also while I was dosing triton heavily, I accidentally introduced bubble algae into my tank and the situation was elevated to epidemic proportion by the trace elements in triton that supposedly promote growth of macroalgae. Long story short, i still think that it is not a bad product and whether it is suitable for you or not will highly depending on your level of playing field. Also while I was using it I still performed regular water change. As far as my understanding goes, triton says you don't have to change water but they never say you cannot change water. Go ahead and change water if you like. I think some of us are taking this statement literally too seriously.

[tofubox]

Ok, so basically I've watched this video before, but to be sure, I've watched it again.

Heres the jeez of what the speaker is trying to explain.

1. Its not magic, its logic

2. The usual hobby test kits are only capable of testing 6.8% of elements

3. In order to stop water change. U need to have a really good filter system that employs po4 remover and a means of removing toxics and inorganics as well, regardless u run triton or use the best salt.

4. Triton method is basically : Adding individual trace elements at measurable amounts.

5. A change of water essentially is just adding back consumed trace elements. It is not removing po4 or whatever harmful elements at a large percentage. Hence why triton doesnt do water change but instead recommand good filtration system, and than topping up the consumed trace elements with their individual bottled elements

The ICP Test machine is essentially ur triton method. It atomise the water down so u can identify each and every single element in the water. And from there, u dose individually each element to the required amount. By no means does he try to promote the use of triton elements, but what hes trying to recommend is for hobbies to send samples of their water for analysis and identify deficit or overdosed elements. U can than buy off the shelf any brand of element, i.e zinc, strontium, maganese etc etc and than dose it to the correct amount.

End of the day, to make it simple, u NEED to send ur water for analysis with ICP test in order for triton to be utilized. Else back to same story....ur just dosing blindly.

Anyone can send their water samples to them.

So does triton work? Sure, if proper water analysis with the icp machine is done regularly to measure your elements and your system employs a bloody good filtration such that u are able to get rid of stuff that shouldn't be there but have accumulated over time.

[surreal1228]

Yeap. It tries to tune elements same as sea water. For myself, I have a big tank and I used to buy many bags of nsw, just to change 10%. After switch to Triton, I don't know need to do this anymore.

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Hmm

If benchmark is sea water then Use seawater then. Why have to Spend So much to simulate. seawater ?

A story to share.

A CEO guy on holiday and Saw a fishman on beach then asked, what s Ur dream to make u get up So early for fishing?

fishman said, i want to get more fishes n change a big boat, then go far to.get more n bigger fishes.

So i Can get.more money to open a restaurant.

then open more branches in city, i become a CEO, and go holidays, enjoy beach life.

’well', CEO said, i am a CEO on My holidays now, and enjoy the Same beach life w u....Why dream/change So much n forget where we are now ?

Enjoy current Guys.

[james72]

So if I understand it correctly, this triton is all about spending $80 to find out what elements are lacking in our tank so we can dose the insufficient elements to make our parameters "perfect"? Oh ya and we won't know if the amount we dose is too much or too less until we spend another $80 to test again and again? And if we start to add more live stocks or if we skim more or use more carbon or.....etc The elements ran off so we need to continously spend more to chase the parameters again? Wow, this is really a good money making program. Kudos to the founder of Triton.

Cheers,

James

[FuEl]

So if I understand it correctly, this triton is all about spending $80 to find out what elements are lacking in our tank so we can dose the insufficient elements to make our parameters "perfect"? Oh ya and we won't know if the amount we dose is too much or too less until we spend another $80 to test again and again? And if we start to add more live stocks or if we skim more or use more carbon or.....etc The elements ran off so we need to continously spend more to chase the parameters again? Wow, this is really a good money making program. Kudos to the founder of Triton.

Cheers,

James

Triton will recommend how much of their individual elements to add to reach the desired levels. As they do not know the concentrations of other products, it is quite impossible to recommend users on how much to dose for other products. Thus if you opt for other brands of trace elements, you can only guess on how much to add and determine again with another ICP test. The cost of the water test is reasonable if you consider the cost of the machinery. It will take thousands of tests to even cover the cost of the machine, which is why not many companies offer this service. It is not an investment meant to generate lots of money. It's like collecting deepwater fish via submersibles for sale, the cost of the submarine itself is never covered.

[hennan]

tofuBox, very good summaries of the video, so ppl understand what's all about. Thumb Up

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[james72]

Triton will recommend how much of their individual elements to add to reach the desired levels. As they do not know the concentrations of other products, it is quite impossible to recommend users on how much to dose for other products. Thus if you opt for other brands of trace elements, you can only guess on how much to add and determine again with another ICP test. The cost of the water test is reasonable if you consider the cost of the machinery. It will take thousands of tests to even cover the cost of the machine, which is why not many companies offer this service. It is not an investment meant to generate lots of money. It's like collecting deepwater fish via submersibles for sale, the cost of the submarine itself is never covered.

Thanks for the explanation. In a way it looks like we are paying Triton to take care of our tank through "tuning" of our water parameters but on top of that we need to have a good filteration system to get rid of the nutrients build up on our own. Is it sustainable? You decide

Honestly, i would rather spend the money to engage lfs to take care of my tank if I am really too busy to maintain it, then use a system that I have little or no control over.

End of the day its the user choice. I shall not comment any farther. Thanks for all the clarification and explanation done by tofu and fuel, these informations are valuable and will help a lot of reefers to understand what Triton is all about.

[sherman]

Is there no other lab locally that can do the test?

[christan1959]

Tks for feedback reefers. Consensus seems to be that benefits may not be worth the cost. I found the comment on strontium deficiency interesting: is there a strontium test kit out there?

[sherman]

There is. But not easy to use.

[christan1959]

I just Google. It's a 10-step test!!!! Not worth for a trace element that shld be sufficiently replenished via WC. We're reefers, not chemists.

[tofubox]

To be honest, i guess all of us are able to benefit from triton, even if we don't use their products. I for one, am interested in testing out my water to get an idea of element content in the water.

That said, I'm still sticking to the conventional method of water change, as that have been proven to be the best reef keeping method for generations for overall health and wellbeing of the animals n corals in our tanks.

As Fuel have mentioned, if we can incorporate the benefits of other systems and mix it up appropriately, we can achieve a desirable outcome. Any idea when the machines will be made available in sg? I understand the cost of testing for americans is USD 40. Hopefully if the cost was made cheaper, than more of us may be keen on water sampling.

[LittleBurger]

Water change for hardworking pple, saves money. I think with weekly water change, one dun need to dose and dun need to buy all the fanciful stuff to dose into tank.

No water change for "busy" pple. I belong to this group. So u spend more money on buying the fanciful stuff. The risk is u enjoy spending money buying new products then appreciate the hobby. Once no fanciful products are launched, the interest for reefing die down & probably decomm.

I think the triton n all new tech reefing stuffs will work well with water change, together.

Eg. When change a new pail of salt, test that pail of newly mixed salt water to get all the parameters, instead of testing the tank water.

So the next new pail of salt u also test that. Soon u know the chemical compounds trending of your salt n try to correlate the health of the livestocks.

I think if we do water change every fortnight and triton testing of new batch of salt in this way, can skip dosing of ca, kh and other elements, cos u get the assurance of wat u add into the tank. No concern of addition compound being added as no dosing system.