pinpoint Calcium monitor

[michaelg]

What's the news on them -Champion lighting has them for about $250....  Just curious if anyone has read any reports on them and the accuracy, ease of continued use, etc.....  either local or on another board.

[ReefMon]

Just saw this too.  Randy Holmes-Farley is getting one from Lou to run through it's paces.   http://reefcentral.com/forums....=511851

 

I sure hope it checks out, as it would be the best $250 I've spent on the tanks in a long time!

[michaelg]

Is it designed for continual use or "dip and read"?

[Guest AlgaeMaN]

I should get mine this week and will post feedback.

[Lee Stearns]

This is cool- I have always said we needed one of these like our PH monitors- now if there was one for alkalinity life would be sweet. It will be great to hear the feed back from  Randy Holmes-Farley and anyone else that has this. Time and demand/supply will hopefully bring the prices down some.

[Guest AlgaeMaN]

I got mine today and so far not impressed. The first time you calibrate it you need to submerse the probe end in tap water for 1 hour. I used distilled water. There are two solutions used to calibrate the unit. One is 100 ppm ca solution and the other is 1000 ppm solution. Calibrating is a little cumbersome and i wasn't sure if I did it correctly the first time. After I calibrated it I tested my water and it read over 800 ppm. I went back and re-calibrated and then the reading was 478 ppm. My Salifert kit was reading 420. The instructions are not clear if this can be used as a constant measuring device like the ph probe is. There is no suction cup on the probe so I'm assuming not. I'm going to mess around with it a little more.

[pez]

Has there ever been any thought of the club purchasing a device like this for general use?  That is, club members could borrow the device to see how accurate their test kits are.  Sounds like a program like this might be pretty popular for certain items and for people who don't have the $$ to purchase one straight up.  I'm thinking:

 

Temperature Monitor

Calcium Monitor

Refractometer

pH meter

 

Anything else?

[Lee Stearns]

My thought was to have a table at the meetings so that folks could bring in samples from their tanks and double check what thier home readings were in comparison to water params checked at the meeting.

[Guest tgallo]

if you have $250.00 to spend, go for it. I would rather spend the money on livestock.The only way i would ever buy such a device is if i could hook it up to a neptune system for a weekly plot.

[pez]

That's the point of having the CLUB buy one that members can use occasionally as necessary.

[michaelg]

I like the idea a lot.  Not like the club doesn't have the $ and could probably get one of the vendors to offer up some sort of package deal.  To it I would say add a light meter  Would be easiest to keep the whole thing together if it travels.  AND would require an honor system that none of it dissappears.

[ReefMon]

Personally I would hold off on the CA meter until it gets reviewed.

 

As for the club getting equipment, we've talked back & forth about a light meter for members use.  I'm all for it, only issue is who is going to deal with the logistics of keeping track of it, what if it disappears or gets broken etc

 

Another project I've been pushing on, and hopefully will happen at the spring meeting, is a chemistry meeting, where we have a reef chemist do a presentation.  Then we get a few brands of test kits (donated) and do a mass of water tests on members systems.

[michaelg]

I agree on holding off on the calcium monitor but some of the other stuff we could use now and know it works.

pH meter with calibration solutions

digital or lab grade thermometer

light meter

refractometer

 

could have an online tracking system- then if you break it you bought it type deal.  If someone screws with the system, we send the boys over for a visit....

 

I posted this in the officers arena.  Hopefully the craig can muster us up a deal while talking with vendors for macna.