Vertex Cerebra

I am just curious to see how people are liking the cerebra controller? I have finally started playing with mine a bit more and definitely enjoy it so far. I don't have any additional probes yet to make any advanced rules, but a pH probe is on the way. I will probably shoot for a float sensor after than so I can get rid of my gravity-fed ATO and float switch.

So far, I have found it fairly easy to connect it all up and set some basic rules for the skimmer, return pump, cal and alk dosing, refugium light and a backup heater. The feed and maintenance modes are nice to shut down the return and skimmer so I don't have to fiddle with the power strip any longer. While I don't have any experience with any other controllers, the Cerebra seems fairly easy to use.

There are a few quirks I have found like a screen that doesn't want to respond properly in the bottom left corner all of the time and that re-calibration has not seemed to fix. The rules don't seem to always take right away and occasionally I have had to re-create one or power cycle the controller to get them to trigger. Hopefully something that will be worked out in the future.

They now have the Cerebra Cloud functioning though it is limited and my controller doesn't seem to stay connected long. I can see it coming together though and can only look forward to when I can stare at my tank info all day from the office.

Overall, I am pretty happy with my initial $375 purchase knowing that I will probably spend the equivalent of an Apex once I have all the probes/etc that I need.

What are other's experience?

 

I do have an aqualifter, but I am not currently using it. ATO is gravity fed, but I would like to power it at some point. My largest concern is the dosing. My dosing containers are down to about 1/3 full at the moment. I think I will let them go down a bit more and just try to maintain enough cal/alk for a week at a time until I am confident everything is working properly. My other thought is temporarily leaving by timer switches plugged into the dosers and then plugging those into the cerebra and syncing the time schedules. That way if the outlets stick on, the backup timers would kill them at the proper time. Appreciate the feedback.

 

Just came down to my multibar unlit and my alk doser running. The alk container was empty, though luckily I had followed part of my plan above (minus the separate timers) and only had about 1/3 of my makeshift gin bottles filled with alk and Ca. Just checked pH and it doesn't seem like it moved much. Dkh went from 8.5 to about 10. It could have happened anytime in the last 24 hours.

So far, nothing seems to be reacting harshly. I will likely do a 5-10 gallon water change (80 total gallons) and observe them a bit more before I change out anymore. Any recommendations for how to minimize the impact? I am using BRS 2 part.

For the record, my dosers are BRS also, so clearly this is a problem with small pumps and the multibar.

Edit: The tank does not look any different and is not cloudy. I wouldn't have even noticed had I not been filling my ATO.