Introduction; Basic Philosophy - Focustronic Mastertonic User Manual

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Introduction

Congratulations for choosing this highly advanced device, measuring nitrate,
phosphate, calcium, magnesium, alkalinity and OLI, and also has an inbuilt possibility
for measuring even more elements in the future.
Please read the whole manual very carefully before setting up and using the
device.

Basic Philosophy

Mastertronic is a standalone machine, that together with the appropriate reagents ,
will completely and automatically measure and record the values of nitrate, nitrite,
phosphate, calcium, magnesium, iodine, KH and OLI!! It also has the inbuilt capacity
from the beginning, to further increase the measuring palette for the future.
Next important after KH are the nutrients Nitrate and Phosphate. Nitrate and
phosphate are very crucial for the corals health as it´s the nutrient for the
zooxanthellae, that in turn gives coral their energy. The acceptable windows for what
is optimal for the coral is quite small, as these elements at the natural reef are both
very stable, and also normally quite low. In a tank, we have a closed system, which
struggles to mimic the nature. It doesn't require much at all to double or halve the
nutrients just over a few days, and that will have a great impact on the corals. In most
cases it´s bad for the coral with these rapid changes, but the value itself is also so
crucial. So for the first time, there is a machine, Mastertronic, that takes care of
these crucial parameters for you and therefore raises the level of reefing to an
outstanding level!
We also added the Calcium and Magnesium measuring possibilities. Normally Ca
and Mg follow the alkalinity consumption, as it takes the same amount of calcium
molecules to form the skeleton as it takes the amount of carbonates (KH). So, as
long as you dose carbonates and Calcium in a ratio of 1:1 then the Ca value will
follow the dKH. Therefore Calcium is not necessarily needed to measure that often.
And up to the present date, almost all modern dosing recipes are balanced in this
way. But with that said, alkalinity is involved in bacterial processes, where for
instance nitrification consumes alkalinity and denitrification does the opposite. In
normal cases this has a quite small impact, but in some cases in long term, the
alkalinity and Ca can drift apart, despite you dosing in a balanced way. Secondly,
your recipe may not be perfectly balanced after all. Therefore we actually also
recommend to measure calcium from time to time. So therefore we have added both
Ca and Mg in Mastertronic, to get this measuring palette complete for you.
Our Alkatronic is superior to measure the alkalinity. But despite that we have chosen
to include a KH measuring function also in Mastertronic, to make it totally complete
for all customers. Its very important to understand here the difference between a
high-end ph electrode based dKH value, like we do in Alkatronic, and a colorimetric