Choosing a Dissolved Oxygen Meter in 2024
3 min reading time
What Do I Need to Know Before Purchasing a Dissolved Oxygen Meter?
So, you've decided you need a dissolved oxygen meter to monitor oxygen levels for your fish pond, hatchery or sea site. Perfect, here are some things for you to consider;
- What parameters do you want to measure? It sounds obvious when choosing a DO Meter, but is it just dissolved oxygen you want to measure. For most trout ponds and hatcheries, dissolved oxygen and temperature are the key parameters to monitor. Our aquaculture industry leading OxyGuard Polaris C Meter is perfect for ponds and hatcheries
- Is your water only fresh water? Ponds and Hatcheries are most commonly fresh water, but there are several which will have sea water, water with a saline content or even some tanks with fresh water and some with salt water. Knowing the salinity of your water, can affect the dissolved oxygen reading on your meter and can even have an affect on the quantity of feed used and costs associated. Our OxyGuard Polaris C units, offer a manual salinity compensation. If you need to monitor both dissolved oxygen and salinity, the YSI Pro ODO/CT is a single handheld instrument with allows you to measure dissolved oxygen, temperature and conductivity.
- What other parameters do you need to measure? It's become very common to want to measure more than just dissolved oxygen and temperature in recent years, with a significant rise in measuring pH both in hatcheries and at sea. For header tanks, Total Gas Pressure (TGP) has become important in addition to just dissolved oxygen.
- I'm needing to use a handheld monitor at sea. Our range of handhelds are ideal for use both on land based farms and at sea. Our OxyGuard Handy Polaris C LDO, takes the best in tried and tested technology from OxyGuard in this new Optical handheld. Our YSI Pro SOLO range is ideal for use on sea sites and challenging environments. The YSI ProSOLO ODO/T offers a modern solution for dissolved oxygen and temperature, using optical probes, thus reducing maintenance, whilst the YSI ProSOLO ODO/CT monitors dissolved oxygen, temperature and conductivity. You can read more about the YSI ProSOLO range.
- How do I capture my data? Pencil and paper are still popular, but somewhat old hat and can lead to data being "fudged". The Polaris C range are all compatible with OxyGuard's new Cobalia cloud software, allowing you to upload your data through a mobile phone app for a small annual subscription. YSI's ProSolo range offer a USB download to Windows PCs, as do the YSI ProSOLO ODO/T and ODO/CT handhelds
- I want to monitor multiple parameters, what's the best way to do this? This depends entirely on personal preference and your budget. If you like the OxyGuard Handy range on instruments, then you need to be prepared to accept multiple instruments. This has positives and negatives, positives being that the cost of servicing and repair can be less, and you can have multiple people taking different parameter readings. The YSI Pro DSS offers multiple parameters, in a very customisable way. The ProDSS with parameters from dissolved oxygen, pH, ORP, Turbidity, Ammonia, Ammonium, Nitrate, TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) and many more.
- I've chosen a meter, how do I look after it? All our dissolved oxygen meters come with instructions for use and how to maintain, but we all break things. At GroAqua, our Service Centre of manufacturer trained and accredited engineers, provide annual servicing and calibration certification for OxyGuard and YSI instruments.
What's our most popular Handheld Meters? Our most popular meters for hatcheries and ponds is the OxyGuard Polaris, ideal for monitoring dissolved oxygen and temperature. For sea sites, the YSI ProSolo ODO/CT measuring dissolved oxygen, temperature offers a robust and versatile meter for challenging environments.