So, in the past decade of the reefing scene, the tank salt sticklers have judged the level of a hobbyist's seriousness of their addiction for whether or not they have a "controller."
In the freshwater scene, we've grown accustomed to lights on analog security timers linked to the co2, and maybe night time and daytime, or similar for powerhead and current direction.
If someone is really interested in going down the rabbit hole, they might use pH probes to control their co2 and surface skimming.
I prefer to bring this minimalist quality into my enjoyment of reefing, and decided to never go out and buy the $700+ controller known as Apex.
I have no reason to!
Well.... Maybe.
An old friend of mine who helped as a facilitator of saltwater fish went north for 3 weeks of grad school, and is entirely out of state.
His wife called me to say the tank had a power outage, including the return pump as well as other things.
I started to use my electrician's brain, found the gfci that went bad and discovered the damage coming from the new refrigerated chiller; every circuit breaker can only do so much before it can no longer do anything at all.
While i built a temporary bridge for everything to start running again, i got power back to his Apex controller, and he got to writing new code for it.
In 15 minutes - less time than it took for me to figure out where the power sink was coming from - my buddy programmed over his phone for the lights and powerheads to shut off 30 seconds before he chiller turns on, and for them to turn back on, 30 seconds after the chiller turns back off.
He did this from Portland, over the phone, while all i did was some minor elextrical troubleshooting m
Reply With Quote