The Mastertronic is the latest new high tech reef aquarium gizmo that promises to streamline and stabilize the management of reef aquarium chemistry. The Mastertronic follows in the footsteps of the Alkatronic which is an all in one alkalinity testing and dosing machine, but alkalinity is easy but the Master takes on some of the other important reef aquarium parameters such as calcium, phosphate, nitrate, magnesium, and alkalinity.
We’re actually impressed with the stated accuracy of the Mastertronic which is much better than any manual water test with a resolution of o.5mg/l for Nitrate, 0.005mg/l for phosphate, 20mg/l for magnesium, 6mg/l for calcium and 0.15 dKH for Alkalinity. Furthermore the Mastertronic introduces a new parameter they call simply ‘OLI’ which measures the discoloration of the aquarium water both alerting reefers when they might need to replace the activated carbon or take other measures to reduce the buildup of organics.
Unlike some of the more “tricky” robotic water testers the Mastertronic measures common aquarium parameters using the same titration and colorimetric procedures that we do everyday, but in an automated fashion. One important decision Focustronic made for the Mastertronic is that instead of coming up with their own reagents they use widely available test kits from Fauna Marin, Tropic Marin, Giesemann, API and Salifert so hopefully this will result in more widespread availability and reasonable pricing.
The price of the Mastertronic will carry an estimated retail cost of $1299 which isn’t cheap but considering it works as a standalone product that can also synergize with the Alkatronic and Dosetronic, this new device will be an all in one solution for automatic testing and management of aquarium water chemistry. The recent setup video for the Mastertronic goes into much greater detail about all the functions and features of this new chemistry tool and we look forward to seeing how it lives up to expectations when it starts shipping very soon.
