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Anyone have experience with controllers??
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...
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David
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. 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.
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