Anyone have experience with controllers??

lostanime · 08-31-2009, 04:42 PM

We're strongly considering going down the slippery slope of controllers and curious if anyone else has played with them.

Most PH tests leave alot to be desired (I feel color blind trying to tell the difference between 7.8 "red" and 8.6 "slightly more orangish red") so I was first considering replacing our dead PH monitor, but since we're heavily dripping kalkwasser (which can substantially raise PH) I figured running a controller that run a pump to dose kalkwasser when PH is below 8.2, and run a different pump to dose freshwater when PH is above 8.2 would do the trick. Basic PH controllers seem to be in the $100-$200 range, and it's not that much more ($270) to go with a fully loaded reefkeeper lite, which can cut on/off all pumps, lighting, heaters, etc based on time, temperature, ph, and optionally even ORP and salinity. This seems like cheap insurance to make sure heaters cant cut on if temp is over 79F, and to cut off all the metal halides if for some reason the tank goes over 81F, and to sound audible alarms if the temperature or PH gets too far out of whack and the controller cant "reign in" the parameters.

Part of my inclination with this was that our tank just crashed in what seems to be an obscure way that makes me wonder if stability was an issue since nothing came out strange in daily spot-testing... (lost almost all of our fish over the last week, despite daily water changes, fresh carbon, and very close monitoring of our parameters and having fish stores confirm parameters. it was a very strange crash in my eyes because fish feed great/aggressively with no visible signs of stress and then some are dead on the floor with no signs of injuries. All of our corals seem great including ORA pearlberry, blue tort, and even the cleaner shrimp, bubble anemone, and clam are all happy... PH 8.2, SG 1.024, ammonia/nitrites/nitrates/copper/phosphates undetectable, temp is swinging from 78.6 to 80.2 while i'm observing...)...

I'm going to let the tank sit fallow for a few months with just the corals, and in the meantime I'm looking into controllers to eliminate equipment failure cooking the fish or PH swings, while at the same time paving the road for adding a calcium reactor and an ozonizer down the road...

lostanime · 09-02-2009, 10:41 AM

Anyone out there with controller experience...??

Judge · 09-02-2009, 05:20 PM

WOW Lost I am so sorry to hear that. I had a brush with the same thing just this past Monday. I had moved the temp controller and apparently touched the dial. I just happened to stay up later than usual and I noticed that Willis (foxface) swimming around after lights out and seemed really stressed. The temp got up to 85.6

. I freaked and we grabbed bags of ice and all the ice packs that I keep when I order frozen fish food, etc. We slowly lowered it back down to around 80 and let it stabilize there. I am extremely fortunate to not have lost anything. Hardest hit seems to be the frogspawn and hammer. They are beginning to bounce back. I hope someone has some input on controllers. I am not often away but I know I would be upset if something happened while I was gone. Keep us posted if you decide to try this. Sounds like a good thing.

lostanime · 09-03-2009, 01:10 PM

Yeah - it was a humbling experience.

To cut down costs while having an opportunity to keep a variety of things (and because I can't stomach restocking angels and tangs any time soon)... we're also looking at redoing the setup. I have a 40gal breeder and a 24gal nano that's currently just laying around - talking to wife about drilling both of them and running three tanks all plumbed to the same sump. The basic idea is going to be 1-2 smaller seahorses in the 24gal with live rock, all the SPS/clam in the 40gal (so I'll only have to heavily light/flow a much smaller body of water and still have the stability of a large body of water), and drop a deep sand bed in the 180gal and keep 1-2 stingrays and possibly a bamboo shark.

Going down this road will mean only 500-600w of lighting (mostly just over the 40gal) instead of 1200w (so hopefully alot less electricity and bulb replacement, and hopefully be able to run the set of tanks closer to 74F), and only running the tunze or the vortech in the 40... letting the return pump (3600gph reeflo dart) do all the flow for both of the fish only tanks (so fish cant damage pumps and vice versa in the two fish only tanks)

It's more just an idea for the moment (need to get wife sign-off and she's VERY unhappy with the subject of aquariums after last week), I'll have to get the other two tanks plumbed into the setup and running empty for a while to make sure alls well before moving the liverock and the coral to them, but going down this road would mean everything shares the same PH/Temp/etc, so one controller could possibly monitor everything.