Adventures in Apex Data

[SDJustin]

I. LOVE. DATA.

I had a 'ph spike' from my calcium reactor ph probe on my Neptune Apex. I noticed it pretty quickly, but didn't get around to troubleshooting it for about 24 hours for various reasons. In the past, I've also had ph dips in my calcium reactor. I've also seen my ORP levels bounce, my main tank ph probe value drop quickly, my flow meters do unexplained things, my two temperature probes stop correlating, my oxygen probe show low oxygen saturation, and most recently, my trident magnesium values dip. Anyhow, I've seen my Neptune Apex probes do all kinds of interesting things, and just decided I'd start to share my experience with reef2reef. I'd like to learn from others as well as share my mistakes and lessons learned.

For the first post (in this thread, which I'll add to over time) I'll share my calcium reactor ph spike.

Three times now, saltwater has pushed up into my CO2 input line (from my carbondoser electronic co2 regulator). Each time, the fix has been to simply disconnect the line and purge it of water, then all is good. I'm not 100% sure why this happens, but think it's correlated with a change in sump water levels... although the sump chamber with the skimmer/calcium reactor/kalk reactor has a pretty constant water level.

My 5lb c02 tank is at 300psi (low) and my post regulator psi is at 11.5 psi). I'm going to head to the local 'airgas' store for a c02 refill this week when I can sneak away from work for an hours.

I'd love to hear what PSI (mostly post regulator) others are running on their calc reactors, especially if using the carbondoser co2 regulator.

I'm running the Vertex RX-C 6D calcium reactor which has been great... I still have to supplement magnesium even with NeoMag in the last chamber, but not much.

I. LOVE. DATA.

 

[SDJustin]

Here was another fun one.
I have a flow meter installed on the 1" PVC plumbing output side of my AquaLogic Delta Star 1/3hp in line chiller. Correct flow is important for a chiller. Too much flow and you lose heat transfer efficiency, too little flow and the chiller can freeze up, as the thermometer is reading tank temperature, not coil chamber temperature.

I saw my chiller flow rate decrease over time, and then rapidly drop. My first guess was that the sensor paddle wheel in the flow meter must have worn out, need cleaning, etc... as I still saw my aquarium temperature bounce between 77-78F as normal.

I had recently placed a filter bag full of bio balls that I recently removed from another small system and placed it in my sump 'return & chiller pump' chamber.

During further inspection I discovered that that filter bag had been sucked up against the chiller pump inlet! (an EcoTech Vectra M1). Upon removing the filter bag and placing it in a more appropriate section of my sump, chiller flow returned to normal.

What's interesting is that tank temperature wasn't impacted that much. A lower flow of colder water had a similar cooling profile as higher flow of 'not quite as cold' water. Or at least, that's my assumption, as I don't have a temperature probe in the chiller's coil chamber. It would be interesting to play with flow... both up and down... to see if there are any efficiency changes at upper and lower limits. I'm not sure I'm brave enough to do this with the temperature of my main reef display at risk.