Crazy APEX question

[Mr.Guy83]

Good morning all, I pulled the trigger and purchased an apex el. But, I have a question about a setting and wanted to know if it’s even possible. What I would like to do is press a feed cycle button and have my power heads switch to a very low setting or even turn off, have my return pump switch to a low setting without turning off and have my skimmer turn completely off so it doesn’t go crazy when my return pump slows, I’d also like the skimmer to come back on roughly five mins after the power heads and return pump so the water gets a chance to level.
Notes:
power heads are two mp10 quiet drive Mobius ready
Return pump is a varios 2 by reef octopus

Considering I’m trying to control three devices with one push of a button which item do I put the code under ? And what would that code even look like, if there is a preset that would make my life a ton easier

thanks in advance for all the help .

 

[Reefer1978]

Good morning. Various 2 can be controlled by the apex. You need a separate cable that can be purchased on BRS or another retailer. mp10s are easy, you can just cut power to them to turn them off. If you want to control speed, you need a WXM module. Skimmer is the easiest one, you can add an OFF command if another pump is off, or feed mode is enabled, and a DEFFER command to turn it on a pre-defined number of minutes after. The code will go into individual outlets (Skimmer, Mp40s, return pump).

 

[Mr.Guy83]

Good morning. Various 2 can be controlled by the apex. You need a separate cable that can be purchased on BRS or another retailer. mp10s are easy, you can just cut power to them to turn them off. If you want to control speed, you need a WXM module. Skimmer is the easiest one, you can add an OFF command if another pump is off, or feed mode is enabled, and a DEFFER command to turn it on a pre-defined number of minutes after. The code will go into individual outlets (Skimmer, Mp40s, return pump).

Ok I think I’ll start by ordering the cable I need

 

[LosReef]

There are a few of these on the Apex. They have some good info.

 

[Mr.Guy83]

I gave it a try , does this read as, When feed mood a is pressed power heads and skimmer will go off, and the skimmer will come back on 5 mins after power heads do?

 

[Reefer1978]

In your first screenshot, skimmer will turn on 20 minutes after FEED A is pressed. There's no dependency on powerheads.

 

[homer1475]

The code you posted will wait 10 minutes before it comes back on after the feed mode has expired.


You can do what you want, but it's pretty complicated and you need to control the varios, and MP10's through the apex.

 

[homer1475]

I do basically the same thing minus the return pump.

I turn off my skimmer, turn off my MP10's, while my jebao pp8's fire up for 5 seconds every 30 seconds to move the food around the tank.

I do this with a virtual outlet, and reference that outlet in my MP10's, jebao, and skimmer outlets.

 

[Alchameth]

Ya the 010 and 015 after the FeedA is a turn on delay after the end of the feed cycle.

 

[Mr.Guy83]

Ok thanks guys I think it’s starting to click

 

[Brett S]

I’m not going to lie , all of this is blowing over my head. I might just turn them off manually until I can get a firmer grip on coding.

You can definitely do this, setting up your first programs take a lot of time and can make your brain hurt, but it only gets easier from here.

For your power heads and skimmer, this is what I would do:

First, set your feed cycle to 5 minutes. In fusion, click on the gear icon at top, then click on the wrench icon, then pick one of the feed cycles. You’re using A in your example above, so make sure that Feed A is set to 5 minutes (300 seconds).

Next, for your wave pumps that you want to be off for 20 minutes, use this for the program:

Fallback ON
Set ON
If FeedA 015 Then OFF

That will keep your wave pumps on all of the time, except when feed cycle A is initiated. Since we set feed cycle A to 5 minutes, then your wave pumps will be off for a total of 20 minutes. The 5 minutes for the actual feed cycle, then an additional 15 minutes after the feed cycle because of the 015 in the command.

For your skimmer the program will be very similar, but it would look like this:

Fallback OFF
Set ON
If FeedA 000 Then OFF

This will keep your skimmer off for only the 5 minutes that feed cycle A is active. Since thE number after the command is 000 that means that there will be no additional off time and it will restart as soon as the feed cycle ends.

So with those two programs as soon as you initiate feed cycle A your skimmer and wave pumps will turn off. The skimmer will restart after 5 minutes and the wave pumps will restart after 20 minutes.

 

[Alchameth]

Apex is a logic based task flow. You set it on or off, and then you add arguments that either return true or false which turns something on or off as a result. Here is my Skimmer programming

Fallback OFF
Set ON
If ATK_Hi CLOSED Then OFF
If Output Cor_20 Percent < 90 Then OFF
Defer 060:00 Then ON

1- Fallback - off turns the skimmer off if the powerbar looses contact with Apex base
2- Set ON - sets the outlet state to ON
3- If ATK_Hi CLOSED Then OFF - I have the Apex ATK, if the high sensor is closed (water touching it) it turns my skimmer off so I don't get bubble overflow
4- If Output Cor_20 Percent < 90 Then OFF - Since the COR pump I can set states based on the pump speed rather than on or off statements. With another pump it would be "If Output *Plug name* OFF Then OFF"
5- Defer 060:00 Then ON - If any above statement turns the pump off, it waits an hour after that statement state changes to turn the outlet back on.

The benefit of tying it to say the return pump over a feed group is regardless of the reason the return gets turned off, the skimmer does too. Makes the programing on the skimmer simpler and cleaner. Then you just need to add the Feed states to the return pump to get things to turn off.

Under Articles, SuncrestReef has a bunch of Apex programming tutorials that are well worth the read.

Also look at Tasks

as there are a number of guided programing things you can do, one of them is setting up the skimmer to turn off with a feed mode and/or if the return pump is off.

 

[Brett S]

I just realized that I misread your original message and you wanted the skimmer to come on 5 minutes after the wave pumps. So you can still set up the programs as I suggested above, but change the number in the If FeedA command for the skimmer to be 5 minutes longer than what you have the wave pumps set to be. Remember that in both cases the actual off time will be 5 minutes longer than the number because the actual off time will include the 5 minutes of the feed cycle.

 

[Mr.Guy83]

You can definitely do this, setting up your first programs take a lot of time and can make your brain hurt, but it only gets easier from here.

For your power heads and skimmer, this is what I would do:

First, set your feed cycle to 5 minutes. In fusion, click on the gear icon at top, then click on the wrench icon, then pick one of the feed cycles. You’re using A in your example above, so make sure that Feed A is set to 5 minutes (300 seconds).

Next, for your wave pumps that you want to be off for 20 minutes, use this for the program:

Fallback ON
Set ON
If FeedA 015 Then OFF

That will keep your wave pumps on all of the time, except when feed cycle A is initiated. Since we set feed cycle A to 5 minutes, then your wave pumps will be off for a total of 20 minutes. The 5 minutes for the actual feed cycle, then an additional 15 minutes after the feed cycle because of the 015 in the command.

For your skimmer the program will be very similar, but it would look like this:

Fallback OFF
Set ON
If FeedA 000 Then OFF

This will keep your skimmer off for only the 5 minutes that feed cycle A is active. Since thE number after the command is 000 that means that there will be no additional off time and it will restart as soon as the feed cycle ends.

So with those two programs as soon as you initiate feed cycle A your skimmer and wave pumps will turn off. The skimmer will restart after 5 minutes and the wave pumps will restart after 20 minutes.

Ok thanks for breaking that down for me that makes a lot of sense, I can change the “ red” numbers in coding to determine the length of time after feed mode ends, got it. Thanks so much

 

[Mr.Guy83]

Apex is a logic based task flow. You set it on or off, and then you add arguments that either return true or false which turns something on or off as a result. Here is my Skimmer programming

Fallback OFF
Set ON
If ATK_Hi CLOSED Then OFF
If Output Cor_20 Percent < 90 Then OFF
Defer 060:00 Then ON

1- Fallback - off turns the skimmer off if the powerbar looses contact with Apex base
2- Set ON - sets the outlet state to ON
3- If ATK_Hi CLOSED Then OFF - I have the Apex ATK, if the high sensor is closed (water touching it) it turns my skimmer off so I don't get bubble overflow
4- If Output Cor_20 Percent < 90 Then OFF - Since the COR pump I can set states based on the pump speed rather than on or off statements. With another pump it would be "If Output *Plug name* OFF Then OFF"
5- Defer 060:00 Then ON - If any above statement turns the pump off, it waits an hour after that statement state changes to turn the outlet back on.

The benefit of tying it to say the return pump over a feed group is regardless of the reason the return gets turned off, the skimmer does too. Makes the programing on the skimmer simpler and cleaner. Then you just need to add the Feed states to the return pump to get things to turn off.

Under Articles, SuncrestReef has a bunch of Apex programming tutorials that are well worth the read.

Also look at Tasks

as there are a number of guided programing things you can do, one of them is setting up the skimmer to turn off with a feed mode and/or if the return pump is off.

Thank you!!!! You guys are awesome!