Apex Temp / Heater Help

[azreefr]

While cleaning my skimmer I accidentally disconnected my temp probe. I did not realize this for 3 hours when I saw my temp at 20.5 degrees F. Pretty cold for Phoenix in August I thought! Luckily, my 2 heaters had only warmed my tank by about 3 degrees to 81.3 when I caught it, plugged the temp probe back in and my fans kicked on.

Lessons learned: need to use advanced programming on my heaters and need to create an alarm. But I'm not sure the best way to program this and would appreciate some help.

[oh207]

The temp probes can also fail and the reading would be the same. I think that's what it defaults to. Best practice is to add a line of code to say if temp < than 60, then power off the outlets for heaters. Because in reality your tank temp shouldn't drop to 60 if tank is sitting in a house.

[aleithol]

OP, I agree with Oh's suggestion.... Also, suggest you pop over to Neptune Community Forums where there are some more detailed current threads on best practices related to heaters, including programming examples...

In my case, I have dual titanium heaters in my sump, on separate circuits, each with about half the wattage required to maintain the max temp required at the coldest part of the year in my Display Tank. In other words, if one got stuck ON, it can't fry my tank, but if one failed OFF, my tank wouldn't freeze either. Both of my heaters have built in thermostats that I have set one notch (1-2F) higher than what my target temp is for the display tank. I then have my primary Apex temp probe (I have a backup in the sump, but won't complicate this discussion with that) physically located next to the weir coming into my return box. My Apex programming watches that temp probe in the DT and turns the heaters on and off within a 0.2F variance. It results in far better temp control for my inhabitants than what most hobbiest heaters with built-in thermostats can do on their own. Because I choose not to have a chiller, my DT temp otherwise goes up about half a degree in the heat of summer because I elect to turn off my home air conditioning at night and not go too nuts with keeping it low during day, trying to save a bit of energy, but otherwise, it works good for me having my Apex in charge of the heaters. Because I'm into backups for the backups when I can, and am a bit paranoid because I came home to a 90gal tank more than 40 years ago that's heater literally boiled its inhabitants over the weekend while was away, this multiple redundant solution works great for me with the Apex as the center of control, but with backups should it ever fail.

Similar to what Oh suggests, I also have a probe fail alarm should one of mine possibly fail or if I'm doing maintenance on on the tank... In the case of temp probes, if one of mine reports <70.0F (probably disconnected), I also turns off the physical outlet that heater is connected to on my Energy Bar, and generally notifies myself via email/text of the condition. I can then take action as need be if I'm near my tank, or at least make a decision to manually turn the outlet for my heater(s) back on remotely if it came to that. ...and yes, I have UPS backup covering my Apex controller and Internet Router so Apex notification takes place and my remote access will hopefully remain available for a couple of hours (but not my heaters since I live in Southern California and don't have to worry with a deep freeze dramatically effecting my tank like some do.) ;)

My point with all that is you're on the right path. Your Apex affords you many possibilities. The question is how far do you want to now take it?

[azreefr]

Thanks for the feedback. Here's what I am using for my two heaters and my alarms. Please let me know if this looks correct. I have an issue with the alarm program. I think it may be the last line. I copied it from several examples I found on the Neptune site. But it keeps alarming. So I had to turn it off.

Heater 1:
Fallback OFF
If Temp < 78.4 Then ON
If Temp > 78.9 Then OFF
If Temp < 70.0 Then OFF
If FeedA 000 Then OFF

Heater 2:
Fallback OFF
If Temp < 78.5 Then ON
If Temp > 79.0 Then OFF
If Temp < 70.0 Then OFF
If FeedA 000 Then OFF

Alarms:
Set OFF
If Temp > 82.0 Then ON
If Temp < 70.0 Then ON
If pH > 8.35 Then ON
If pH < 7.70 Then ON
If Power Apex Off 001 Then ON

[aleithol]

Others may chime in that are a whole lot better thinking quickly like an Apex than me, however, a couple of thoughts:

Heaters look fine

Consider though making just one of the Fallback statements ON vs both OFF as they are now -- that way if you ever lost aquabus connectivity to the EB, at least one heater would be on. Only do that if the heater has it's own thermostat and you've got it set at a reasonable temp for your tank above what you want the Apex to ever run it at.
As it gets cooler, watch your logs with the heaters going on and off too often. It's possible when the temp is close to the values you have specified. What I did is add a "Defer 002:00 Then ON" so the heater only comes on once the min temp is hit and has stayed that way for 2 mins -- not for example if I've just dumped in a gallon of fresh water or something and cause the probe to go nuts for a short time. You'll want to adjust the time based on your tank size and setup.

On the "keeps alarming"... A couple of things perhaps:

On the native dashboard, go to Configuration / Misc Setup. I bet you have Power Monitor Enabled. It needs to be disabled unless you have an optional 12V power supply also attached to your controller and your config is set up to handle power outages with a UPS (details over on Neptune Community Forums and in the CRM). Worst case, take out one statement at a time in your alarm outlet to find which one is causing the issue if it's not the power one and is something with your temp or pH.
As a side note, there are two places where alarms can be sent from -- Native Apex and Fusion. There are pros and cons to using each. If you've not found it, on the native dashboard, go to Configuration / Network Setup. Midway down on that screen is "Re-email delay" where you can set how often your Apex will send you an email/text when your alarm outlet goes off -- too short will drive anyone nuts with useless duplicate notifications -- too long defeats the purpose once you have confidence your programming is sending you real alerts.

[aleithol]

OP, one other thought, assuming you have a sump, those heaters are in there, and you use FeedA for also turning off your return pump like you are with the heaters: What you have will work using FeedA statements in the heater programs to turn them off, but what I do instead, is have ancilary devices like my heaters turn off when my return pump is off using an "If Outlet Return = OFF Then OFF" (where "Return" is the name of your return pump outlet). At least for me, the slight advantage to that is when you turn off your return for any reason, via FeedA or say if you manually turn it off to do maintenance, the heaters will then automatically go off for as long as the return is, and you don't have to remember to flip them individually off and then back on as well. I'm all for trying to protect my tank from myself messing some little detail up like that, so it may be a little enhancement you want to consider not only for your heater programs but perhaps other things like skimmer or whatever as well... There are many ways to accomplish a single task, just some perhaps even better than others especially if you have an aging mind like mine is becoming. ;)

[azreefr]

Great tips. My alarm was enabled in the native dashboard. Disabled the alarm and no more false alarms. I always thought native and fusion would always match?

[azreefr]

Should also mention that my native and fusion dashboards did not match. Could be that I am viewing 2 different dashboard versions but my alarm was on my native dashboard but not on my fusion dashboard.

[reefdude3749]

Bert....exactly the same logic that I use... :). It works very well and simplifies programming IMO.

[aleithol]

Dashboard status matters for every outlet, including alarms. ON means always on regardless of programming. OFF means off regardless of programming. AUTO means let your programming for that outlet decide.
In the case of Alarm and Warning outlets, you never want to set their slider ON unless perhaps you're testing what alarm tone you want the display to sound, and you never want email ON unless you're testing email/text receipt. Moving the slider to OFF will disable any of them -- otherwise AUTO is normal for most people.

Dashboard status between the native/classic dashboard and Fusion will match assuming you have connectivity with Fusion --- in other words, if Fusion can't reach your Apex, it may not represent reality but will/should present you with a "disconnect pop-up" if that is the case. (From my experience, Fusion can sometimes take a few seconds to represent reality, and the HTML5 implementation can do some odd/interesting things depending on one's POV with seeming to move the slider on it's own -- so I don't take this off-subject, I previously documented that and made some suggestions for improvement over on Neptune Systems Community forums.)

Perhaps you're confused with how all the dashboards represent things. The slider position is what you set to ON/AUTO/OFF as your intent for that outlet. Just above and on the right end of each slider is the current status that your Apex is reporting for that same outlet. In the case where you've set a slider to ON or OFF, current status should match within moments of moving the slider. If you set the slider to AUTO, the current status will report either ON or OFF depending how your programming has established it for that moment in time (with the reporting caveat I noted above for Fusion, and you're recognizing it may take a second or two for the Apex to cycle through your programming and put ON or OFF into effect). The outlet status sometimes displays AUTO temporarily if the dashboard has requested the outlet change, but it has not yet received confirmation back from your controller the programming has been cycled through to put it ON or OFF. Not to make this more complex, but rather prevent someone from adding in the caveat themselves, some pumps or lights will show additional info in the outlet status area when they are ON -- what displays varies on the different dashboards, so don't worry if some outlets say something other than ON or OFF one day :)).

[azreefr]

It was nice of you to take the time to write the detailed explanation about the sliders. My issue for the false alarm turned out to be due to the Log "enable" box was checked. My other observation was that the alarm controls "sliders" were physically on my native control panel (neptune apex app) but not on my Fusion dashboard. I think it may be that I was possibly looking at two difference custom dashboards (dashboard 1 vs dashboard 2). But I changed it before I checked the dashboard numbers.