(*&$(&*APEX!!!!

Give Cyberjester and B-Rad a call before you send your money to Digital Aquatics.  I think CyberJester can give you the negatives (which makes your experiences this week seem like a walk in the park), and B-Rad the positives as I think he's been happy with his.
--AJ

 

Yea I love my Reefkeeper, does what I want it to do. Plus added a new module to it and it worked flawless. Instructions are pretty easy to figure out, but it take some time.

 

all I can say is i'm glad I got the RKE!

 

What modules do you have fishbrian?

 

Reading this thread reminds me why I only use my controller to turn my lights on and off....

 

Makes for an expensive timer Jeremy! 
--AJ

 

I'm sorry to hear about your day. Sucks big time. I don't know how three degrees can have made so much of a difference when I have more than a 3 degree temp swing on some days in the summer...but maybe it's because the duration is not as sustained as what you have seen. Sorry for your loss.

--AJ

 

This thread does make you think though, Do you really NEED a controller. Now if one piece fails you can shut down your tank or have it run wild. Be quite a hit to get home and find out that all your lights have been on for 10 hours, your heaters running maxed out all dossers running wide open, and anything else running out of control. Bluefool was very lucky to catch this as it could have crashed the tank very easily. But on the other hand we hear of more issues with controllers every day, but is it that there are really more problems or that there are more and more people using controllers.

 

Did not notice two more pages. Sorry.

 

I couldn't disagree with this post more.   There are a TON of people (myself included) who have been using controllers successfully for a long, long time.   The vast majority of controllers out there (Reef Keeper, Aqua Controller, etc) work flawlessly and provide huge benefits.   I know it sounds like everyone had problems with them all the time, but the reality is you're hearing the vocal minority.   For most people, controllers reliably provide a level of stability that can really make a system thrive.
Whether you use a controller or not, you should always have checks and balances in place to make sure that WHEN things go wrong, they don't crash your system.

 

I think that the bigger point to be made here is if using a controller, put in fail-safe conditions, use your controller responsibly. For example, allow the controller to heat your tank, but set the heater thermostats to 78 or 79 degrees, so just in case your temp probe goes crazy, you won't cook your tank. Another one is to put in alarm conditions so if something gets stuck on, you'll get notifications. For example, if my alk dosing pump were to get stuck on, set it to alert on high pH. A lot of people don't think an ORP probe provides much value, but others say that it can be a general indicator to the health of your water. Set it to alert at 350 as ORP that low could indicate issues. Other things might be to put in code that says if your temp is wildly high or wildly low (i.e. +/-10 degrees), you probably have a temp probe issue and to put your tank into an "alert" state where only the bare essentials are running (i.e. powerheads, etc.). Put in float switches to detect too high or too low water conditions in your tank which could mean something like a top off that's continuously topping off or a leak in your sump. Again, if this happens, go into your "alert" state. If you had a top off that was continuously topping off, you might flood your sump, but by turning off your return pump, you may save your tank. The too low switch may save your return pump if you blow a seal on your external pump or maybe a bulkhead gave out on you suddenly. I've got a basement sump and I'm working on putting a float switch in my overflow on my display tank. The idea is that if my overflow gets too high, that it must be clogged or not working properly...so if it gets tripped, rather than flood my family room, it shuts off my return pump. Extra probes like Conductivity (salinity) can be expensive to implement ($250), but if you have high end corals, investing in this could save you 10x is cost in corals if you have an Auto-Top off go crazy. Yes, this stuff is expensive...but so are your corals and livestock. The things that can protect your tank are often not invested in because they're not as beautiful as that orange satosa, flamethrower chalice, purple monster or that bleeding apple scoly, but when properly used, they can serve as an insurance policy to keep those corals healthy. Just because you can't see some of these components doesn't mean that you're not better off to have them. There's lots that you can do to put fail-safes into your controller programming...but you have to think about how your system is set up and put them in. They don't put themselves in. Think of your controller as a set of tools that you can build something with. You want your structure to be built so that if one thing fails, the whole structure doesn't come crumbling down. Controllers should be used with care and with a well thought out plan. I think Stan Lee put it well when he wrote "with great power, comes great responsibility". Controllers can be very powerful, but you must use them responsibly or potentially suffer catastrophic loss.

--AJ

 

I am curious as to what your temp is. I know that in the summer my tank has reached 81 degrees without ill effects. i typically keep mine around 78. If your tank is reaching beyond those numbers a chiller maybe in order. Not sure if you have one or not jeff. Just seems to me there are a number of things you could do to keep things going. power stripes and timers for one. I am pretty sure that is something most of us use over expensive controllers. Also jeff, my tank is available if you need to store somethings till you get it settled. you know where I live and i am happy to help anyway I can.

 

Not trying to add insult to injury...but I'm curious.  The issue was high temp because lights and heaters cooked things.  I'm not sure how the float switches would have helped to detect a high temp condition...what am I missing?  And what kid of alarms do you have triggered to your float switches?
One other important point came out on your RC thread about this that I had totally overlooked...this occurred on a DC8 (AC3 generation powerstrip), not an EB8 (Apex generation powerstrip).  The DC8 is not as intelligent in detecting the state of outlets.  All the Apex can do is send the DC8 what the outlets should be set to and assume that the DC8 is functioning and doing what it's told.  On the EB8, it's able to detect the outlet state.  That added intelligence was added in the EB8 (along with some other nice features such as real-time total amp usage, etc).  So the Apex probably was working just exactly how you programed it to work and sending instructions to the DC8, and the DC8 just fried and switched everything to ON.  Not cool, but probably an important point to realize when you sell your Apex to someone else.
When things are stable again, come on over and I'll give you a few corals to get things started again...
--AJ

 

I'll hook you with some corals too man if things get out of hand.

 

Blue,

Not to discount that you had a problem with your APEX and/or DC8, but are you sure there isn't something else in the mix causing your issues? My system usually stays within 1 degree, but I've had numerous times where (for various reasons) my temp has swung more than 4 degrees with no ill effects at all. I've seen the tank as low as 75 and as high as 83 and everything stays quite happy. I've also had pretty dramatic swings in PH with no ill effects. It just seems like there may be some other factor at play. Do you have a grounding probe?

-JB