How do you protect your tank from temperature probe failure?

[COreef8]

So I got off a flight today to a bunch of Apex alarms from my quarantine tank. I checked the Apex and it appears my temperature probe was going nuts. The graph shows the temperature jumping up and down more than a full degree from one minute to the next. When I got home, the readings returned to normal and the coral appeared to be doing fine but I swapped the probe out anyways.

This leads me to a question. I know this is one of the reasons that some refuse to put their tank in the hands of a full controller, but equipment failures are bound to happen, Apex or not. I think a great number of people use controllers now, so how would you protect your tank from something like this?

Another PM1 and an additional probe would give you the ability to cross check the readings but I don't know of any way for the Apex to monitor both and throw out the bad data. Any ideas?

 

[EmdeReef]

I calibrate my temp probe monthly (only regular maintenance I never miss) as it's the only automatic thing that could damage my tank. Depending on the type of your heater you have you can set heater's thermometer to something near the temperature so the heater shuts down if the temp gets too high, that's usually not the best defense but can prevent catastrophic damage. You could also use an inkbird controller and connect to your apex plug and use the inkbird thermostat as a failsafe set a couple degrees above your apex.

 

[ca1ore]

You can use the defer command in apex to avoid triggering heaters until the measure is stable.

 

[COreef8]

I calibrate my temp probe monthly (only regular maintenance I never miss) as it's the only automatic thing that could damage my tank. Depending on the type of your heater you have you can set heater's thermometer to something near the temperature so the heater shuts down if the temp gets too high, that's usually not the best defense but can prevent catastrophic damage. You could also use an inkbird controller and connect to your apex plug and use the inkbird thermostat as a failsafe set a couple degrees above your apex.

Great ideas. I haven’t heard of the inkbird, I’ll have to look into that. It would be nice to have a bit more redundancy with the heater operation.

 

[COreef8]

You can use the defer command in apex to avoid triggering heaters until the measure is stable.

I do like this command and I actually do use it with the heater but I’ve never had issues like this with the temp probe.

The temp readings weren’t just fluctuating, they were flat out wrong. The room it is in was about 60 degrees all day so there was no way it would have been 83 degrees in the tank.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

So I got off a flight today to a bunch of Apex alarms from my quarantine tank. I checked the Apex and it appears my temperature probe was going nuts. The graph shows the temperature jumping up and down more than a full degree from one minute to the next. When I got home, the readings returned to normal and the coral appeared to be doing fine but I swapped the probe out anyways.

This leads me to a question. I know this is one of the reasons that some refuse to put their tank in the hands of a full controller, but equipment failures are bound to happen, Apex or not. I think a great number of people use controllers now, so how would you protect your tank from something like this?

Another PM1 and an additional probe would give you the ability to cross check the readings but I don't know of any way for the Apex to monitor both and throw out the bad data. Any ideas?

I have a chiller has temperature controller for heaters. So, I set heaters then plug to chiller and chiller also controls heaters. So redundant system. Work for me

 

[ca1ore]

Hmm, that is strange. I have 5 apex temp probes across my system and haven’t had any issues with them. Be careful with the inkbird. Lots of bad experiences, including my own. I view them as cheap garbage. If you want a separate, redundant controller, check out Ranco.

 

[COreef8]

The problem for me is that I can protect from overheating the tank but I don’t have a system to protect the system from my backup system itself. The temp sensor indicated that the temp was too high so it shut the heater off and turned the fans on.

I’m about to go out of town for a week. If this happened when I was gone, the tank would not just be un-heated the whole time, the cooling fans would be running.

Having a separate heater that is not controlled by the apex just creates a separate point of failure.

 

[COreef8]

Hmm, that is strange. I have 5 apex temp probes across my system and haven’t had any issues with them. Be careful with the inkbird. Lots of bad experiences, including my own. I view them as cheap garbage. If you want a separate, redundant controller, check out Ranco.

I had great success with their temp probes too but the probe I’m using is my quarantine probe so it does get more abused. I use it during my tank transfer method of quarantine so it gets moved around, washed, dried, coiled, uncoiled, etc quite frequently. Maybe that contributed to the failure. I’ll look into the Ranco too.

 

[Thales]

I would contact Neptune and see what they have to say, as that is a weird thing for your temp probe to do.
Do you have a controller between the heater and the Apex? That would help a lot.

 

[Tastee]

I use the heater’s internal thermostats as redundancy for my Apex and the reverse for my chiller. My system is a RSR 250 so ~65g total.

My primary heater is controlled by my Apex, on < 25.0 C, off > 25.2 C. This heater’s thermostat is set to ~25.5 C so if the Apex doesn’t turn it off, the heater will turn off itself. Eheim Jager 300W.

My backup heater is not controlled by my Apex and connected to mains power. It is set to turn on and off via it’s thermostat at ~24.5 C. Cheaper Aqua One 200W. I check it is still working every month.

My chiller is powered by my Apex EB6 but controlled by it’s internal thermostat. The Apex is configured to turn the chiller outlet on > 25 C and off < 24.8 C. The Chiller thermostat is set to turn on at 26 C, in practice I find it turns itself on (according to the Apex temp probe) ~26.5 C and off ~25.4 C.

I have the usual Apex alerts for high/low temp - < 24.9 ON, > 26.8 ON.

This gives me plenty of redundancy.

 

[COreef8]

I would contact Neptune and see what they have to say, as that is a weird thing for your temp probe to do.
Do you have a controller between the heater and the Apex? That would help a lot.

A couple people mentioned other options for additional controllers as well but I hadn’t really considered it before. I’ll defibitely look in to some of the aforementioned options.

 

[COreef8]

I use the heater’s internal thermostats as redundancy for my Apex and the reverse for my chiller. My system is a RSR 250 so ~65g total.

My primary heater is controlled by my Apex, on < 25.0 C, off > 25.2 C. This heater’s thermostat is set to ~25.5 C so if the Apex doesn’t turn it off, the heater will turn off itself. Eheim Jager 300W.

My backup heater is not controlled by my Apex and connected to mains power. It is set to turn on and off via it’s thermostat at ~24.5 C. Cheaper Aqua One 200W. I check it is still working every month.

My chiller is powered by my Apex EB6 but controlled by it’s internal thermostat. The Apex is configured to turn the chiller outlet on > 25 C and off < 24.8 C. The Chiller thermostat is set to turn on at 26 C, in practice I find it turns itself on (according to the Apex temp probe) ~26.5 C and off ~25.4 C.

I have the usual Apex alerts for high/low temp - < 24.9 ON, > 26.8 ON.

This gives me plenty of redundancy.

Someone else mentioned something like this and I thought a bit about leaving a heater uncontrolled by the apex. Do you have any protection then if that heater gets stuck in the on position? I guess having the chiller helps a lot. If the heater gets stuck on then the chiller can help combat the temperature rise but I don’t use a chiller.

If my controller shuts the heater off, the tank would get cold but I’d much rather have that than the heater getting stuck on and cooking my tank.

 

[DangerDave]

I also keep my chiller turned on all winter. It has already save my tank once for an apex temp probe failure.

The moral of the story is when you can, always back up the back up to your back ups back up.

Dave

 

[shred5]

I thought about using one of these..

https://www.coralvue.com/smart-skimmer-security-3154

 

[Thales]

Someone else mentioned something like this and I thought a bit about leaving a heater uncontrolled by the apex. Do you have any protection then if that heater gets stuck in the on position? I guess having the chiller helps a lot. If the heater gets stuck on then the chiller can help combat the temperature rise but I don’t use a chiller.

If my controller shuts the heater off, the tank would get cold but I’d much rather have that than the heater getting stuck on and cooking my tank.

Two control sources is the way to go for heaters - the APEX and something else. I use titanium stick heaters without built in controls (because they aren't good enough, heaters just aren't good enough), that plug into Ranco controllers that plug into the APEX. This way you have two levels of protection from failures.
The other thing that can help is multiple smaller heaters, that way if one gets stuck on, it doesn't have enough power to over heat your tank.

 

[COreef8]

Two control sources is the way to go for heaters - the APEX and something else. I use titanium stick heaters without built in controls (because they aren't good enough, heaters just aren't good enough), that plug into Ranco controllers that plug into the APEX. This way you have two levels of protection from failures.
The other thing that can help is multiple smaller heaters, that way if one gets stuck on, it doesn't have enough power to over heat your tank.

This is definitely a good point and on my DT I use 2 smaller heaters so if one got stuck on it would take several hours to overheat the tank. Unfortunately, my quarantine tank doesn’t have much space for dual heaters but I may have to make room.

 

[COreef8]

I also keep my chiller turned on all winter. It has already save my tank once for an apex temp probe failure.

The moral of the story is when you can, always back up the back up to your back ups back up.

Dave

Well said. I love the chiller idea as a back up as well but in its current location, the breaker for my aquarium can’t handle the addition of a chiller. Re-wiring that circuit would cost a small fortune. It’s certainly a consideration for the next house though.

 

[shred5]

I thought about using one of these..

https://www.coralvue.com/smart-skimmer-security-3154

.

What I was thinking with this it would plug directly to my heater and then this to the controller.
This way it does not take out the whole controller

 

[COreef8]

What I was thinking with this it would plug directly to my heater and then this to the controller.
This way it does not take out the whole controller

I saw this when it first came out and was waiting to see a number of good reviews before I considered it. Sounds like a contender though.