!!!!!! Is failure not an option but inevitable??????

[greenhorn reefer]

Just installed an$40 cooling fan that runs along the back of my tank. I was getting temps up to 82. Degrees with no heater on. Now my apex controll's my fan and heater and my temp bounces from 78.1 and 78.5 every day no cooler no hotter

Sounds great. Apex huh, what else do you control with it?

 

[LEOreefer]

My 2 cents on the failure and prevention, I think there's very little we can do to prevent equipment failure and it's just a part of the hobby that we have to learn to deal with. With that said I also think that a lot of crashes that happen can be prevented. Let's think about what the average new hobbyists sees when getting into the hobby. They see a tv show that shows giant salt water aquarium fully stocked with fish within days, they see forums that have beautiful tanks and don't realize that it took years to reach that goal. Then when they set up and jump in and fail they don't understand why and leave the hobby.
I have made friend who recently decided to set up a salt water tank. From purchase to stock with animals was about 3 months. Now to each his own but I pleaded with him and explained why he dose not want to rush the hobby and let nature take its course. The fact is they best anyone can do in my eyes is out as much information out there as possible. In my build thread I will be documenting and including photos the process of a cycle and all the ugliness it takes to get through it. I will document the parameters and the swings I experience as well has anything that goes wrong through the life of my tank how ever long that might be. I also try to start new helpful threads as often as I can and actually just thought of one while I was typing this lol

 

[LEOreefer]

Sounds great. Apex huh, what else do you control with it?

Heater , return, wave makers , fan, protein skimmer, carbon and algae reactor along with all probes hooked upm

 

[greenhorn reefer]

Heater , return, wave makers , fan, protein skimmer, carbon and algae reactor along with all probes hooked upm

I don't know much about an apex, does it send you text notifications? I also think that all of the equipment you have listed is fairly safe to automate. I worry about tanks that have auto dosing and ato plumbing. A failed skimmer, return, reactor, seems relatively safe. However, flood a tank with ro or calc seems dangerous. I'd run your equipment on an apex, especially a heater. So let me get this strait, you set a temp, and if your tank goes over, your apex shuts off the heater? That is worth what ever an apex costs.

 

[Paul B]

I am almost at the point of not having major problems. Almost, but not quite. In the 46 years my reef has been running the tank never actually crashed but I have had many floods. Too many to remember but thankfully they are much less frequent now because every time I had one, I designed a better system. In the construction industry we had to build what was called "Fail Safe" which means, if that part fails, Nothing would happen. Like electric locks, they are fail safe so if they fail, or if there is no power, the doors will open. That was problematic when I wired the jail cells for the "Dangerous Drug Division of the FBI" because when the lights in the street came on, there was a voltage drop on the street, all the locks would reverse and the offices would lock, but the jail cells would open. I found that out before they had any prisoners in there.
If the power goes out in my tank, nothing happens except the pumps go off. I don't have a sump, so no problems with that flooding. I have had small plumbing leaks in my DIY, 5' skimmer which caused a flood but now there is a five gallon bucket under it with a DIY shut off switch that turns off the pump feeding the skimmer if the bucket fills, which happens all the time.

My DIY, water cooled LEDs are on two separate systems so one can fail but half the lights will still work. Also if the water cooled pump for the LEDs fail, the lights go off to prevent them overheating.

I also use 3 heaters so if two fail, one still works and 4 powerheads.
There is also a water alarm under my tank that warns me of a leak.

In those years the power has gone out numerous times for days at a time. I think I was out 4 or 5 days during Sandy. I use a reverse Undergravel filter and power outages do not affect it at all. The power could stay out forever.
Now I have a generator but during Sandy, I ran out of gas here on Long Island even thought I siphoned it out of my cars and boat. I now made it so that my generator runs on gasoline and natural gas so I can run it forever.
I keep my fish immune so they never get diseases and I have no need of a quarantine or hospital tank so no worries there.
Now if I could keep my fish from jumping out, I would have it made.

 

[LEOreefer]

I don't know much about an apex, does it send you text notifications? I also think that all of the equipment you have listed is fairly safe to automate. I worry about tanks that have auto dosing and ato plumbing. A failed skimmer, return, reactor, seems relatively safe. However, flood a tank with ro or calc seems dangerous. I'd run your equipment on an apex, especially a heater. So let me get this strait, you set a temp, and if your tank goes over, your apex shuts off the heater? That is worth what ever an apex costs.

Yes if my tabk goes over temp it kills the heater and turns the fan on. It sends text and email alerts and there thousands of thing you could program it to do. For example if your auto dosing alk you get set it up so if it reads a ph over a certain level it will shut the dosing down. I have leak detection all around my tabk if those sensors get wet I get notifications imetitaly so I can take action. If it monitors my salt level low it shuts off my ATO . Thesesbare just a few options along with full control over your tank from anywhere in the world