Tunze or Apex for ATO?

[The Rook]

I have both the Tunze for an ATO and an Apex controller. Wondering if I'd be better off setting up the ATO thru Apex for the email / remote capabilities. The tunze is really reliable though.

 

[bristlebasher]

The e-mail functionality of Apex does not necessarily need to be linked to doing ATO.

So if the Tunze is reliable then continue using that for ATO and then use Apex to monitor tank parameters.

 

[The Rook]

I guess adding a "low water" float to the ato container and a "high water" float to the sump would give me what I'm looking for.

 

[MTWiley]

I have the Tunze 3155 doing day to day ATO operations. But it's plugged into an EB8 with Float Switches for abnormal high/low levels in the sump wired to the Apex BoB for visibility/alerting and that extra little bit of redundancy since my tank is on hardwood. I've also got a couple water/leak sensors around my sump tied into the BoB(if you wire them in parallel you can use one BoB port for multiple leak sensors) as well to make sure that if I ever sprung a I'd start shutting things down and receive a notification ASAP.

Disclaimer: I'm a network engineer by trade supporting infrastructure that has to meet 99.99% uptime SLAs, so building redundancy into systems is a major part of my day job and means I get paged less at night so I tend to like redundancy quite a bit more than most people.

 

[The Rook]

Thanks for the info on your setup. I'm on hardwood as well. Good info on wiring the leak sensors inline.

 

[The Rook]

I have the Tunze 3155 doing day to day ATO operations. But it's plugged into an EB8 with Float Switches for abnormal high/low levels in the sump wired to the Apex BoB for visibility/alerting and that extra little bit of redundancy since my tank is on hardwood. I've also got a couple water/leak sensors around my sump tied into the BoB(if you wire them in parallel you can use one BoB port for multiple leak sensors) as well to make sure that if I ever sprung a I'd start shutting things down and receive a notification ASAP.

Disclaimer: I'm a network engineer by trade supporting infrastructure that has to meet 99.99% uptime SLAs, so building redundancy into systems is a major part of my day job and means I get paged less at night so I tend to like redundancy quite a bit more than most people.

I realized you're running the leak sensors directly into the b.o.b. Does that mean i don't truly need that ALD box in order to run the leak detectors?

 

[MTWiley]

You do not need the ALD to run the leak sensors I linked, you do need it to use the Neptune leak sensors

 

[The Rook]

You do not need the ALD to run the leak sensors I linked, you do need it to use the Neptune leak sensors

Oh, didn't catch that. Awesome info thanks. Just what I'm looking to do.

 

[re76]

I have the Tunze 3155 doing day to day ATO operations. But it's plugged into an EB8 with Float Switches for abnormal high/low levels in the sump wired to the Apex BoB for visibility/alerting and that extra little bit of redundancy since my tank is on hardwood. I've also got a couple water/leak sensors around my sump tied into the BoB(if you wire them in parallel you can use one BoB port for multiple leak sensors) as well to make sure that if I ever sprung a I'd start shutting things down and receive a notification ASAP.

Disclaimer: I'm a network engineer by trade supporting infrastructure that has to meet 99.99% uptime SLAs, so building redundancy into systems is a major part of my day job and means I get paged less at night so I tend to like redundancy quite a bit more than most people.

I'm assuming you have tested these sensors? Something like dropping a little tank water on them and seeing if you can sense it?

Let me know if you have. Assuming they work I might go this route. I have used leak sensors in the past and because water is not actually a terribly great conductor there is usually a voltage drop across the sensor. Given, I was trying to detect RODI water, which has a much lower conductivity than salt water.

 

[The Rook]

Hopefully they work well. Just ordered the pieces to make a breakout box and will be ordering a sensor today as well. Should have it all together next week sometime.

 

[MTWiley]

It's been a few years so I'm not 100% sure, but I'm fairly certain I tested it when I was initially setting it up.

 

[zoomonster]

I use the Tunze 3155 and it does pretty much everything it needs to do on its own. It is plugged into Apex buts that's just to turn it off easily whether manual for maintenance or feeding. The Tunze can't report anything to Apex so email is useless. I do use leak sensors tied to email but that's really the only possible relation to Apex other than if a sensor trips to shutoff ATO. You did not say which Tunze but the 3155 has dual sensors and a 10m auto shutoff and the chance of a overflow is almost non existent unless a hose cracks or something that leak detector will catch. The downside to auto shutoff is if you were using Apex remote you would not see that. If away for a while and your salinity was climbing (assuming the conductivity probe was working reliably) you could remotely toggle the ATO on/off to reset.

I'm on tile anyway but IMO one of the best things you can have is a PVC bottom in your stand and in my case up to 3" water in a 6ft stand is not going anywhere. I ordered my stand with one but a fairly simple matter of buying PVC board and making one. A bottom and 4 sides glued together.