Electronic element detectors

[thebulkhimself]

I'm reasonably new to the reef tank craze - I used to keep fresh water fish years ago and never really checked for ammonia / nitrite etc but just kept the water clean and she worked.

Now starting out in the marine world and having to check for everything on the periodic table I can't understand why the only electronic instruments available are pH and Temperature readers. I'm no scientist but I can't imagine it would be to difficult to design instruments to measure Ammonium / Nitrite / Calcium / Phosphate / etc, and even better a multifunction box that can give you an instantaneous readout of everything and even have set levels to signal an alarm when something gets out of tolerance.

Maybe these things are around but I haven't been able to find them.

Thoughts?

[Twitterbait]

most of the electronic meters will test based on how current passes through the probe... to detect the others (biological/elemental components) it would require some far more sophisticated stuff having to do with spectrum analysis (more powerful version of our refractometer). you can actually get these testers but it would costs $$$$$$$!!!

there are electric testers for:

Ph
Temp
ORP (o2 reduction potential)
o2
Calcium
TDS (total dissolved solids)
LUX (light)

[Loverotties]

I was going to wright the same list!

[thebulkhimself]

Im sure some chemist wiz out there will figure it out - a 'simple' device that draws in a sample of water and distributes it into numerous vials of which a chemical is introduced to measure each vial and an electronic readout is given then all the water is discarded into a bigger vial which must be emptied once a month.

Hey..... its a dream - I just sound like a lazy S**t

[motorslave]

Another issue to consider is the corrosive nature of salt water. The salt creep alone would make for high maintainence of the tools. The CA monitor is an example. They are not really dependable and require alot to keep in some form of reliabilty and even that is questionable.

Robert

[Twitterbait]

I have a friend that works with compost and electricity generation from methane. He has access to a scanner that measures these stats in the large liquid manure bins that generate methane. I'm sure they could alter it to work on a tank... tha only problem,

the scanner alone costs over a million.
Spectrometers are not cheap.

[thebulkhimself]

Fair enough.
Thanks for the info guys -> I'm gonna keep the dream alive though

Cheers guys

Bulk