automation gone bad

madjoe

madjoe

Premium member
so I read almost every post even if I don't comment and see that automation is what everyone wants and every body always talks about the positive things never the negative that ive seen. don't get me wrong I use dosers and reefkeeper but ive actually just had a issue where I got busy with life and figured tank was on auto pilot all good right ? wrong ! alk container ran dry so alk dropped to 5 calcium sky rocketed to 660 corals faded but all in all I got lucky none died. as from what ive seen people seem to crash systems with so called automation more then the guy who manually does everything granted more work but I think the reason is because it is more work and have to pay closer attention then automation . I still love my dosers but now pay closer attention to everything . what automation close calls or crashes have you guys had maybe something that some of us don't think about but should .
 
Agree 100% Joe. Not every setup is fool proof or for everyone. Automation without consideration for failure points can be more dangerous than manual error if there was no automation.
 
First day setting up my Apex I programmed it wrong. Instead of running dosers for 5hrs 3min on 17 min off it ran for 19hrs. My alk went from 8.5 to 12 over night. I did a 100% water change over a 24 hr period to bring it back down to 9. Nothing was lost but had I not noticed till the next day I would have lost everything.
 
I automated my dosing but messed up which outlets they go too therefore leaving my dowers on 24/7. Like you, I noticed it and only got to 8.9 and fixed it with zero side effects. Just because someone automates something doesn't mean it's duty free.
 
This is why I just use kalkwasser in my ATO. Takes a little while to get the amount of kalk correct, but once you do it's pretty much self sufficient. The only exceptions are during the times of year when evaporation are really high, in which case you adjust the amount of kalk to account for the increased top off.

But I do agree that while automation is lauded as the next best thing since sliced bread, it does not mean that you can just leave the tank alone without at least checking on it once a day to make sure all is well.

Recently, due to work and personal life, I've neglected my tanks pretty badly. I've been working towards righting the ship, but during that time I've only experienced a couple issues, one of which was my heater failing. Luckily I had an email alert set up through the apex and was alerted to the issue right away so that I could do something about it.

The keys to a successful, automated system are redundancy. Anything that is a liquid and needs replenishment would need a float to alert you. When you get to that stage though, you either have to truly know exactly what you're doing in regards to programming, or just be incredibly lucky.
 
jrpark22000 said:
Agree 100% Joe. Not every setup is fool proof or for everyone. Automation without consideration for failure points can be more dangerous than manual error if there was no automation.
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Yea it makes hobby easier for sure but has lots of human error and electronic error possibilities lol.
 
I had my heaters set to Fail OFF. I don't know why I set it that way but I did. While I was in Canada on a business trip my apex lost connection to itself (no clue how) and set my heaters to off. My tank temp hit 68* over the period of 4 days.
 
I have an apex but I don't actually have anything automated other than heaters. I think the best way to use it is not to expect it to be set it and forget it. I think its primary value is its ability to alert you and the ability it gives you to respond to alerts when you are away from your tank.
 
I think I got my fair share of my ATO dumping all my RO water into tank causing over flow- even the failsafe failed SMH
 
Joe5688 said:
I had my heaters set to Fail OFF. I don't know why I set it that way but I did. While I was in Canada on a business trip my apex lost connection to itself (no clue how) and set my heaters to off. My tank temp hit 68* over the period of 4 days.
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Just a cold water reef. :)
 
Dosing pump decided to empty half container of alk into tank in one day!! Skyrocketed to almost 13! Corals still not happy with me.


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