Crash

[Aww7979]

So I'd like to say that most experences come with a cost. My heater stayed on and my tank temp reached 95. I lost 80% of my sps and half of my lps. Half of my ricordia melted away along with a few fish. My descriptions below are as good as I could identify my colinies. All zoas and mushrooms made it.

Montipora
Undata dead
Reverse sunset dead
Blue polyp digitata dead
Sunset survived
Mystic sunset survived

Other sps
Green slimmer dead
Cyphastrea dead
Pink Millie dead
Green Millie dead
Purple bonsai dead
Fur berry dead
Sereatapora dead
Green Stylophora dead
Purple Stylophora survived
Pink Stylophora survived
Red planet survived
Optimus prime survived

Lps
Wilsoni brain dead
Wilsoni brain dead
Symphillia dead
Symphillia dead
Hammer dead
Candy cane survived
Duncan survived
Torch survived

What I guess is that I did not program the apex correctly and it did not kill power to the outlet when it got to hot.

I guess I get to work on aquascaping.

[CoralsAddiction]

Wow sorry you experienced a wipeout. Crazy.

[wyattroa]

What was the program you had in the apex?

[Aww7979]

If Temp < 77.0 Then ON
If Temp > 84.0 Then OFF

The heater it's self was thermostat controlled. The apex was supposed to be my fail safe. I wanted the outlet to be energized unless there was a problem.

[Redman88]

my heater controller failed on me last week as well. no Coral to lose and none of my fish made it.

[TangingOut]

Which controller was that Redman?

[Redman88]

well it was a DIY controller. how ever i have the same controller setup on a freshwater tank that has been up and running longer. I just haven't had time to sit down and discover where the fault is. Just looking at it i am thinking it was the temp probe but it could be the controller its self. So i went ahead and got a new probe and a new controller. seeing as i have another tank to put together that will need a controller as well.


this is the controller i am using.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EZIEU3Q/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

and here is how its packaged on my salt water tank

http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/kk59/reddin1982/salt%20water%20fish/A70E4262-857B-4669-8E62-85E500DC6DFB_zpsbmptbceh.jpg

and the heater i use, yes i know its not the safest to use.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GR9FOI6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[iceet]

Aww7979 I am sorry for your losses. I am shocked that the Apex controller did not act as a failsafe in this situation, and hope you are able to figure out what the issue was.

Also if you do not mind, can you please post what the brand and model of the heater that crapped on you is. This will be of great service to current and future Reef Central members.

Redman thank you for the link, that is a very economical solution. How is that controller powered, do you have to wire it yourself?

Also, I'm no electrical engineer, but could it be that the fact that these controllers are constantly energizing/de-energizing the plugs these heaters are plugged into causing premature wear on the heaters themselves? As opposed to just leaving the heaters energized all the time and dependent on their own internal thermostats.

[kendrid]

Also if you do not mind, can you please post what the brand and model of the heater that crapped on you is. This will be of great service to current and future Reef Central members.


This really isn't all that useful unless people start reporting hundreds of them failing. All brands of heaters fail. The one heater I know of that caused a lot of damage for many people was Marineland Stealth which they eventually recalled.

I have three failed heaters sitting in a box right now. All stuck 'on'. EHEIM Jager (highly recommended by many), Aqueon, and a Hydor. I also had one of those Marineland heaters cook my first freshwater tank. As you can guess I don't trust heaters with that many failed on me.

I run two controllers on my heater in my 90g. I have a Finnex controller and that is plugged into my Apex controller.

OP: Did your Apex read 95 degrees when you noticed the crash? Your programming looks fine so something is odd.

[Waters40]

That is why I still use the old school method of two smaller heaters....unless they both fail in the on position at the same time, I will not have any issues.

[Redman88]

Most heaters don't have problems with on off cycles. The relays controlling them do. In my case the heater is set to be constantly on internally to some set point that isn't specified. That's what I get for cheap heater. I know my problem is the probe or the controller because it is showing a temp 30 deg cooler then the actual temp. When I found that it had cooked my tank the tank temp was at 103 and it was showing 68. Now the tank is at room temp of 71 and the controller is showing 42. Like I said I haven't had time to fully isolate the problem as I found it Tuesday before last and have been working 16.5 hour days since.

[thegrun]

Even though you use a controller you should also use the heater thermometers to turn off the heaters when the tank gets to a few degrees above where you frogram your heaters to turn off at. My heaters turn off at 77 degrees, so I set the thermometer on the heater to turn off at 78 degrees (after calibrating it).

[Aww7979]

All good info. I guess that I was so worried about some other things I let some slip. This was my first adventure into a salt water aquarium and it was going very very well. Live and learn.

The heater was a Catalina 500 watt. I have a 90 with a 30 sump and it was my only heater. It was doing a fine job. Setting it at 84 gave me a temp that was about 78 to 80.

Was I over working it?

I think as far as the apex is concerned, I just need to learn more about it.

[ReefingWerewolf]

My failsafe is that my chiller is way oversized for my system...

[iceet]

Having two small heaters instead of a large one and an oversized chiller are both good ideas.

[Coelli]

I'm still confused about how this happened. If the Apex is programmed to shut the outlet off when the temp is over 84 degrees, how did the heater keep going? I use basically the same code, so I'd really like to avoid something like this happening to my tank. I have my Apex set up to come on at <78 and off at >78.5 (I have a nano and the probe is on the other side of the tank, and our house is pretty warm in the summer so it rarely actually has to do any heating right now). If the Apex is supposed to cut power to the outlet, what happened here?

[Mark Bianco]

One issue as stated above when a temp probe fails it will almost all of the time fail giving a lower reading. One way around this is to program the Apex with a safety backup failsafe commend. Notice the last line.

Fallback OFF
Set OFF
If Temp < 77.0 Then ON
If Temp > 84.0 Then OFF
If Temp < 60 Then OFF

Your heater is drawing about 4.1 amps and you should be able to use it on any of the outlets of the EB8 However I prefer to use the mechanical relays of the EB8's

Mark

[foundnemo11]

I had the same problem years ago.. Now I don't use a controller for heat because of that. If the thermometer goes then it's going to cook your tank.

I use a couple heaters with just enough to heat up my tank. Both aren't going to go so if one does it'll take a while for it to get too high. So I'll probably catch it in time of a problem

Also this helps with heaters not heating because you'll have a back up heater.

[Pimentinha1987]

Very sorry to hear that OP.
I too have an apex controlling my temp so it's good to know that things can still happen...

I do have a chiller but still things can happen...

[skimjim]

If Temp < 77.0 Then ON
If Temp > 84.0 Then OFF

I have three points:

1) I'm guessing your FALLBACK was ON (?) .... It should be OFF bc if the Apex outlet ever gets offline or not working, it will turn that outlet OFF. If my heater(s) didn't work from some reason I would want the Apex outlet OFF bc its much easier for the tank to deal with the ambient temp in my house (66-72) than for a 85+ heater cookout.

2) Did you have any alerts set up? I have my Apex sending me both emails and texts when something triggers an alert. But I'm assuming you have a smartphone.

3) You should consider buying multiple heaters than just one big one. I have a 6ft 180g plus a 100g sump. I have two-100w in the 180g and two-100w in the sump. I have my Apex controlling the two in the tank as one device and the two in the sump as one device. I'd be way too paranoid with just one-500w flamethrower.

Sorry for your loss. Everything happens for a reason. You'll rebound.

[iceet]

One issue as stated above when a temp probe fails it will almost all of the time fail giving a lower reading. One way around this is to program the Apex with a safety backup failsafe commend. Notice the last line.

This would mean that not only the temp probe failed, but the heater's internal thermostat failed as well since that should shut off when too hot automatically.

[Eric45]

That is why I still use the old school method of two smaller heaters....unless they both fail in the on position at the same time, I will not have any issues.

Now that to me sounds like an almost failsafe approach. Although if you're away for a couple of weeks and one is stuck on, I think you'll have a problem.

[Ontheway]

Most heaters don't have problems with on off cycles. The relays controlling them do. In my case the heater is set to be constantly on internally to some set point that isn't specified. That's what I get for cheap heater. I know my problem is the probe or the controller because it is showing a temp 30 deg cooler then the actual temp. When I found that it had cooked my tank the tank temp was at 103 and it was showing 68. Now the tank is at room temp of 71 and the controller is showing 42. Like I said I haven't had time to fully isolate the problem as I found it Tuesday before last and have been working 16.5 hour days since.

As far ad i remember, centigrade-Fahrenheit temp. Difference is also about 30 degrees. May it be related to units ?

[iceet]

As far ad i remember, centigrade-Fahrenheit temp. Difference is also about 30 degrees. May it be related to units ?

°C x 9/5 + 32 = °F

[Aww7979]

Hello everyone. I have an update. After so much death, I had a pretty good green hair algae outbreak, so I added some turbo snails, hermits, and another Emerald crab. The phosphates are under control, and now the algae is acceptable. I bought a few SPS frags from Aqua SD and Pacific East Aquaculture to replace the colonies I lost. Plus a friend gave a few frags of colonies I had given him.

So things are on the mend.

[wrott]

That's good to hear that you're back in business. I trust temp probes as much as heater thermostats.
Just everyone's info, I've had a power blip during a thunderstorm reprogram my chiller to 55F. I didn't figure it out until temp was 60F and lost half of everything and all acros.
That was a hard lesson learned, I got an extension socket to plug the chiller into apex so that <75F chiller shuts off, hopefully.

[SeargentSlice]

Sorry for your loss but these are very dependable
http://www.amazon.com/RANCO-ETC-111000-Digital-Temperature-Control/dp/B0015NV5BE

[Mark9]

Tank is looking great.