Canopy and Stand Build for 42 Gallon Hex Tank

[blindskater02]

I received my Kamoer KH Carer Friday. I got it hooked up and calibrated Saturday. It test alkalinity and also give a pH reading. My understanding is the pH may not track to one calibrated for tank water since it is calibrated at different cal points. It can also add buffering to the tank to maintain the alkalinity. The test frequency is from once a day to once every hour. I set mine for three times a day. It appears to be built well. It was not too bad setting it up and calibrating it. I also set it up to use Randy's recipe for alkalinity buffering. Below is a photo after setup and calibration. Water remains in the beaker after testing to keep the pH probe wet. It will drian that water and refill before testing. It has a stirrer built in. I currently have it set to rinse twice since I am dumping the water back into the tank. It adds the testing reagent a small amount at a time and stirs after each so it does take a while to test, about 30 minutes.

This is a side view. There is an empty 10 gallon tank beside it that is there just in case of emergency need.

Here is a view from the side with the pump heads. The clear door is kept closed with magnets and can easily be pulled open.

Below is a photo with the side door open.

Below is a photo of the back of the unit. The green tubing is water coming from the tank. The yellow tubing is from the testing reagent tank. The black tubing is from the KH buffer tank. The blue tubing goes to the tank and is the one used to dispense the buffering agent to the tank. The red is the waste from the testing and in my case it goes back into the tank.

Below is the readings from the first test. The pH is 8.0 and the alkalinity is 8.4. After the test completed I check the pH on my Hydros and it was reading 8.06. So those seem close enough for me considering that the probe on the Hydros is about 1.5 years old.

I have only had it up and running for a few days but so far I am impressed with it. I will have to post some screenshots of the app once it runs for a while. It is the same app that is used with the Kamoer dosing pumps. Below is a Hanna test done right after the first test on the Kamoer.

I have been looking into this KH tester, but I cannot find information on the reagents used or where to purchase. Can you advise? Thanks!

 

[n2585722]

I have been looking into this KH tester, but I cannot find information on the reagents used or where to purchase. Can you advise? Thanks!

I started using this once I was out of the reagent that came with the unit. I mix it 8 to 1 instead of 4 to 1 that is used for the Alkatronic. https://www.coralvue.com/alkalinity-testing-machine-concentrated-reagent . For the buffer I used Randy's recipe for the alkalinity which is baking soda and DI water. I did recalibrate everything when I switched the reagent and calibrated the KHC to match my Hanna tester. It is currently set to start adding KH buffer if it drops below 8.5.

 

[n2585722]

I finally got around to making my button boxes and mounting them to the workbench. There is three of them. I put one above each storage tank. Below are a couple of the boxes I used. They are 80 X 50 X 26 mm boxes.

Marking them for drilling holes. This is going to be a side hole for the connector that the cable from another box or the controller attach to. I used GX12 4 pin connectors since I had enough of them to finish all three boxes.

This is marked for drilling the holes for the push button switches. I only had to do this with one box. I have a drill press so once the holes were lined up for the sides I drilled all of them before going to the top and did the same with the top.

Below is a drilled box and the parts for it less the wiring and resistors. The push button switches were push on then push again for off but since all but one switch have to be momentary I opened up the ones I wanted to be momentary and removed the latch mechanism then reassembled them. That makes them momentary or on only when pushed. This will be the box above the mix tank. One switch will be the Mix ready switch and the other will be a switch to turn on the lights above the bench. The mix ready switch when pressed will cause the mix ready latch output to turn on which will turn on the mix ready output. These outputs do not have an actual output assigned on the controller and are only used as logic. Once on the mix low sensor has to go dry to reset the mix ready latch. At that time the controller will refill the mix tank with DI from the RODI until the mix tank full sensor goes wet. It also turns on the stirring pump once the water level is above 60%. It also turns it off when it drops below 60%. It will not use the water to refill the fresh saltwater tank until I press the mix ready button. The bench light push button will turn on the bench light when pressed and turn it back off when pressed again. If it is not pressed again the controller will turn off the light after 30 minutes.

This is a photo of the box from the side.

Photo of the box with the two GX12 connectors installed.

A photo with the two switches installed.

This is a photo of the box complete without the wiring and resistors. Each box will have different resistors since they will be on the same 0-10v input.

I will continue with the other boxes and the switch input setup in another post.

 

[n2585722]

Continuing with the button boxes below is the parts for the one that will be mounted above the fresh saltwater tank. The switch with the yellow button is a momentary switch and the one with the red button is a push for on and push for off switch. Other than the switches it is the same as the other until the resistors and wiring are installed.

The next photo is with the GX12 connectors installed.

Below is the box completed other than the wiring and resistors.

Below are the parts of the third box. It is basically the same except for the switches.

Below is the inside of one of the boxes after installing the resistors and wiring. This is the one that will be installed above the fresh saltwater tank. This is the one that has the push for on and push for off switch. This switch grounds the signal line which causes 0v on the 0-10v signal. This will also prevent any other switches form working as long as it is on. This switch is used to pause my AWC. That means any scheduled auto water change will not start while this switch is on. If one is in progress it will finish. The other switch grounds two resistors in series with it and connected to the input. In this case the resistors are 1000 ohms each to form a 2k ohm resistor. There is a 510 ohm resistor form a 5v supply to one of the pins on the GX12 connector. Between it and the two 1k resistor you get 4 volts on the input. It does not have to be exact. If you choose 4 volts on the input setup if it is above 3.5 volts and below 4.5 volts it is considered 4 volts as far as switch input settings. More on this and the other boxes later.

This is a photo of the three boxes ready for use. The black pushbutton is not in use. If I need it I can use 10 volts instead of 5 volts and add it in. I would also have to change the settings on the other buttons since I doubled the voltage. The trigger point for the one mentioned earlier would be 8 volts instead of 4 volts.

Below I added some labels to the boxes for the buttons. The box on the left has the button to activate mix ready on the top and the button to turn on the bench lighting on the bottom. The middle one has the button to dispense fresh saltwater from the tank to another container when pushed. It will keep the dispense pump running as long as it is kept pressed. I also have a valve on the dispense line. There is about a 1 second delay for turn on and turn off. The pumps are Neptune PUMP pumps. The bottom button switch paused the AWC and disables the other switches when pressed. It will stay in that state until the button is pressed again. The box on the right has one button in use and that is DI dispense. It is the same as fresh salt water dispense except it is from the DI storage tank but woks the same. The bottom button is not in use at this time.

Here the three boxes are mounted to the front of the workbench above the appropriate tanks. The tank on the left is the mix tank. The middle tank is the fresh saltwater tank.The tank on the right is the DI tank. All that is left here is the cables between the boxes. The tanks are on the Brute dolly's so they can be rolled out from the work bench if needed. I do have to do that when adding salt mix to the mix tank.

This is a photo with the cables installed between the boxes.

I will continue with this on another post. There is a couple of third party people that make button boxes for the Hydros or breakout boxes for the 0-10v inputs. I am a electronics technician by trade so I made my own but I did use a modified version of a resistor ladder network used by one of the third party guy's making these.

 

[n2585722]

Now for the setup in the controllers for the switches. The first settings are from the first box on the left. I will start with the mix ready button. The first screenshot is the inputs I have visable on my garage page. These inputs are related to things that fo on in the garage with the RODI, ATO,AWC and All For Reef dosing. The mix ready tile is in the second row third from the left. It is currently off which is normal if it is not beeing pressed.

Below is the settings for the mix ready input. It is a 0-10v input type. The input mode is button. The 0-10v input port is my X4 in the garage and it is input 4 which if you are using the quad cable it is the orange 3.5mm plug on that cable. The trigger voltage is set to 3 volts. So if the controller sees between 2.5 and 3.5 volts on that 0-10v input channel then this switch input will change to the on state.The event duration is set to 10 seconds. After it is pressed then the on state will last 10 seconds. You do have to press it for a few seconds to activate it anyway. It is set to end the event on the second press. This is not important on this input but I do have one that it is and it will be next. The resistor that is connected to ground on this button is a 750 ohm. There is also a 510 ohm resistor attached from the input to a 5 volt source.

The switch input is used by the output below. This output just changes the input to an output so it can be used by the other two outputs. It is the generic type. It has an input count of 1. The single input is the mix ready input. It is set to active when on or pressed. All the rest of the settings are default since they are not used.

The next output is the mix ready latch. This is used to keep the mix ready output in the on state after the mix ready button has been pressed. The signal that turn it off is the mix ready output turning off. It is the combiner type and has 2 inputs. One is the mix ready start output and the other is the mix ready output itself. It is set to xombiner mode OR which makes this a OR gate. If either input is on this output is on. Since this output will turn on mix ready provided the mix low sensor is not dry. The mix ready output will then keep this output on. Non of the other settings are used on this output.

Below is the mix ready output. It is a combiner mode output type. It has two inputs. One is the mix ready latch and the other is the low mix output. The low mix output is inverted So when it is not low this input will he seen as high or on in this combiner. Once it goes to low level then the output will he seen as off in the combiner. Since this output uses the AND combiner mode which makes it an AND gate it takes both inputs being seen as high or on. So the Mix ready output will turn off also causing the mix ready latch output to turn off. Also the The sensor that low mix uses is also used to trigger the RODI on and the mix fill solenoid on. This will refill the mix tank with DI water. The only thing left after it is full is to add the salt mix and then press that mix ready button so the Hydros knows it can be used to refill the fresh saltwater tank.

The other button in that box is for the work bench light. When pressed it turns the bench light on and if I press it again it will turn it off. It also has a timer set so it will go off after 30 minutes if I forget to turn it off. It is the 0-10v input type and it also uses the button input mode. It is also on the same input port as the first button. In fact all the buttons and the switch in these boxed are on the same input port.The difference is this one triggers at 2 volts. So if 1.5 to 2.5 volts is seen by the controller then this switch will turn on. The event duration is set to 30 minutes. It is also set to turn off if the button is pressed again. If I forget to press it again it will turn off in 30 minutes. This switch connects a 310 ohm resistor to ground.

Below is the output set to turn on the bench light. This uses a generic output type. It has one input and that is the bench light input. It is set to be active when the input is on. It uses a XP8 output in the garage as the output device. The bench light is plugged into that output.

That is it for this box. I will resume with the center box next.

 

[n2585722]

Now to the center box. It has the fresh saltwater dispense push button and the AWC pause switch. The settings for the fresh saltwater dispense button are in the screenshot below. This is the 0-10v input type and the input mode is button. The port is the same one used for the previous box. This one is set to 4 volts so if the controller sees 3.5-4.5 volts it turns on the fresh saltwater dispense button. The event duration is 10 seconds and pushing again will stop the event. The resistor in series with this switch is a 2k ohm resistor.

Below is the output controlled with the fresh saltwater dispense button. It is the generic output type with 1 input. The input is the fresh saltwater dispense button. It is set to active when on. It uses outlet 1 on a wifi power strip in the garage as the output device. I use a PMUP pump for this and it can be powered from a force port on the Kraken when it is available. The Kraken has 8 24 volt force ports and 4 12 volt direct drive ports. The PMUP uses a Microfit 3.0 connector. I got mine from Mouser. With this output if I press and hold the button it will dispense until I release the button. Most of the time I am not using much since the tank has AWC. I do use it to flush out the carbon in a reactor before I use it on the tank.

Below is the settings for the AWC pause switch. Again it uses the 0-10v input type. The input mode is switch instead of button. It uses the same input port as the rest of the buttons. This one is set to 0 volts so if the controller sees a voltage below .5 volts this switch is on. The data type is on/off and it is set to on when inside range. Notification level is set to none. If this switch is on none of the other switches will work. So it also locks out the other switches. This works great for me since I usually turn off AWC when I am going to be out of town for a few days. This switch has no resistor since the target voltage is 0.

Below is the output that is controlled by the pause ATO switch. It uses the generic output type with one input. The input is the pause ATO switch. It is set to active when on. When the switch is on this output is on.

This output is for AWC halt. It is the combiner output type and has two inputs. The first input is low FSW. If the fresh saltwater goes low then we do not want to run another water change after the current one finishes. The other input is AWC pause which is the previous output.

Below is the water change schedule settings. The type of schedule is water change regimen. The water change count is 3. It does three water changes at 7am, 1pm and 7pm each day. The start time is set to 7am the end time is set to 1am. This was done since each sequence includes the off time between it and the next water change. This also has to be included on the last one even though there is not another change. So that is the reason for extending the end time to 1am. This is set to run every day. It is also set to run all days of the week. Now to the settings that pause the AWC. The depends on is set to AWC Halt. The dependency mode is set to off if on. So if AWC halt is on the schedule will not start. Any schedule in process will complete the process. The dependency is used on the schedule instead of the AWC output for two reasons. Using the one on the output will immediately stop process and also stop the ATO from running since it is also a part of that output. Using depends on on outputs that have multiple outputs will affect all outputs. So if dependency mode is set to on if XX and XX is met all outputs will turn on. That also applies to off if XX also. Depends on takes precedence over any of the other output settings.

Below is the AWC output settings. It took three screenshots to get it all. It is a automatic water change output type. The high level input is the sump full sensor. This is used for the ATO and the fill pump. The next is a low level sensor. If this is set then it would drain down to that sensor the fill back up to the high level sensor. Since I use dosing pumps for this I don't use the low level sensor. I have it set to run the drain pump for 8 minutes under the drain duration setting. I don't use the leak detection here since I have three leak detectors I use it on other outputs which will kill power to the pumps if a leak is detected along with some other sensors as well. The ATO output port is on my X4 in the garage. The power safe range is set from 1-1.9 watts. The power notification is set to orange. So if the wattage is not within range the controller will send a alert. The drain output port is also on my X4 in the garage. The safe range for this pump is set from 1-2 watts. It is also set to a notification level of orange. The fill output port is a X2 in the garage. It also has a safe range form 1-2 watts. The fill and drain pumps are the same type and model of Intllab pumps. The ATO pump is a Hydros dosing pump. It is also set to a notification level of orange. The depends on statement is not used on this output. Advanced settings have been enabled for the ATO. I would suggest doing this. Set the values in the settings to match the needs of you tank if you are using a Hydros for ATO since these will limit the amount of water that can be added in a given time. I set the minimum off time to 15 minutes. With this setting it will only run every 15 minutes. This with maximum on time limits the amount of water that can be dispensed. I have the maximum off time set for 6 hours. This setting will only cause an alert to be sent. It will not turn on the pump. If it goes 6 hours without topping off something needs to be checked out. I have the minimum on time set to 45 seconds so it will run at least that long once it starts regardless of the high level sensor. I have the maximum on time set for 3 minutes and 45 seconds. If it goes that long it will send an alert that maximum on time has been exceeded. The next setting is the important one. I have run past max on time set to off so it will only run to the maximum on time then turn off. It will still send the alert. If this happens then things need to be checked unless you are still trying to get it set correctly for your tank. It will stay off until the high level sensor goes wet or you intervene by overriding to off or on and then back to auto. The drain and fill pump outputs also have their advanced settings enable. Both are maximum on times. The drain is set to 12 minutes and run past max on time is set to off. The fill is set to 18 minutes and run past max on time is set to off. Both have a notification level set to orange. So if either pump hits max on time I will get an alert.

That is it for this box. Next will be the last one. It only has one button connected on it. There is a second button installed but it is not connected at this time.

 

[n2585722]

Now for the button box on the right. This only has one button hooked up. That is the DI dispense which is basically the same as fresh saltwater dispense. Below is the screenshot of the DI dispense input settings. It is a 0-10v input type and input mode is button. The 0-10v input port is the same one used by the other two button boxes. The trigger voltage on this one is 1v so if the controller sees a voltage between .5-1.5 volts then this button is on. The event duration is set to 10 seconds and second press ends event. The resistor in series with this switch is a 115 ohm resistor.

Below is the DI dispense output. It is a generic output type with a input count of 1. The input is the previous input button. It is set to active when on. The output device is one of the AC outlets on the wifi power strip in the garage. I use the button for dispensing DI into containers for various uses. I need DI for some of the test and for mixing reagent and KH buffering for the KH Carer mainly but since the button makes it so easy to get small amounts from the DI storage I am sure I will be using it quite a bit.

This is the schematic I used to come up with the resistor values. The big difference between this and mine is the 5v and ground connection are reversed on mine. that also means the voltage output at each switch is also reversed. The voltage on mine from left to right is 4v, 3v, 2v, 1v and 0v instead of what is labeled on the diagram. , The input has 5v when there is no button pressed and the switch is off. So basically I reversed the connections at pin 3 and pin 6. This schematic is posted in the Hydros forum in the DIY section. The input I used is pin 5. Here is a link to the post where I got the schematic from DIY 0-10V Input Switch Box (5 Switches) .

 

[n2585722]

There was a new app and firmware release for the Hydros Wednesday. One of the main differences is the ability to choose different time frames for the graphs. There is also graph value limit setting in the input settings to keep the graph values within those limits. The limits only apply to values after these settings are setup so any previous readings are not affected by this setting. Below are some screenshots of my graphs in the different time frames. These are set for one month. Also the Hydros can get readings from the Kamoer KH Carer now. I have not had mine for a complete month so I do not have a complete months worth of data yet.

Below is graphs for temp and pH that go back a year. You can see the three times my AC unit was out on the graph.

Below is a screenshot of the popup to select the time frame.

Below are a couple of screenshots of the temp and pH input with the graph value limits setup. For temp I have it set to between 73 and 82 degrees. This keeps the graph from expanding for outliers in the data. The second screenshot is for the pH input.

Below is a screenshot of inputs for my hex tank. The third and forth tiles are data from my KH Carer. There is a time and date of the last test from the KH Carer. I have it set to test at 6:00am, 2:00pm and 10:00pm. The test takes about 30 minutes to complete so the time on the readings are at the end of the test.

Since I brought up the KH Carer here is some data and a graph comparing readings from it with the Hanna tester and the Hydros pH probe. I have noticed that after it adds buffering the KH reading will drop compared to the Hanna. They will overlap again but it takes somewhere between 12 to 24 hours. I may go to a once a day testing, but I also plan on trying a different buffering recipe first to see if it reacts faster to it. Currently I am using baking soda and DI water. I have some baked baking soda mixed up to try after I go through the plain baking soda that is in use.

 

[n2585722]

I got some Fauna Marin reference solution to check my testing equipment with. Below is a chart with the results. The Hanna Alkalinity tester shows no difference between it and what the referecne is suppose to be for Alkalinity. The Hanna calcium was off 1.18%, Hanna nitrate was off by 8%, Milwaukee phosphate was off by 15%, Red Sea Mag Pro was off by 2.66% and my refractometer was off by 2.86%. The phosphate meter is the oldest meter which is about 14 years old. I did notice the last batch of reagent I got was a lower reading than my previous reaget so it could be a variance in the reagent I still have a couple of packets so I might retest using one of them, but I am ok with 15% on phosphate. The Hanna HR Nitrate also was a 8% difference but for that 8% is ok for me. The others were close to the reference that I checked. It is only a 100ml bottle and most test use 10ml at a time so It won't last too long if you have a lot of test meters or kits to check. I used near 50% of it testing the ones I did. I figured I would post if anyone else is interested in checking their test equipment against a reference. I will probably do this on occasion of if I have a reason to think one of the testers or test kits is off.

 

[n2585722]

I got some photos with the camera today. I got the emerald crab to get rid on the bubble algae. So far it has not messed with the coral. I am not sure where the bubble algae came from. I have not added anything in over 5 years and it just popped up and grew incredibly fast. It does seem to be disappearing in places.

 

[ScottD]

Wow such a wealth of knowledge on programming for the hydros system. I’m looking to use hydros in the future on my tank when I get it up and running and came across all your help in the big hydros thread. I love all the DIY you’ve done with the buttons and relays etc. How would one go about learning about circuitry and the different elements that can be used and combined like relays, resistors, etc. I remember taking a course in circuitry design in college as we could model mechanical systems with electric circuits but that was 20 years ago and haven’t used it since.

 

[n2585722]

Wow such a wealth of knowledge on programming for the hydros system. I’m looking to use hydros in the future on my tank when I get it up and running and came across all your help in the big hydros thread. I love all the DIY you’ve done with the buttons and relays etc. How would one go about learning about circuitry and the different elements that can be used and combined like relays, resistors, etc. I remember taking a course in circuitry design in college as we could model mechanical systems with electric circuits but that was 20 years ago and haven’t used it since.

Thank you. As far as the resistors in the circuits there is a thread in the DIY section of the Hydros forum that has a schematic for the circuit https://forum.coralvuehydros.com/threads/diy-0-10v-input-switch-box-5-switches.316/ . Jeff also makes a button box if you just want to purchase it instead of making one. That DIY section has a lot of information on the Hydros ports including the pin outs of each with the exception of the direct drive port and that just drives motor coils of the popular DC brushless motors so there are only three pins. I have worked in electronics since the mid 70's. I retired from NXP semiconductor 3 years ago. The place I worked was Motorola when I started there. So the electronics side of things is kind of second nature for me. If you have questions about hooking something up the Hydros forum or their facebook community would be a good place to ask. I can answer a lot of things but I do not have everything that they have so if it is a question about something I do not have I may not have the answer but someone in one of those two places will probably be able to answer your question. Here is a link to the facebook group https://m.facebook.com/groups/hydrosgroup/?ref=share .

 

[ScottD]

Thank you. As far as the resistors in the circuits there is a thread in the DIY section of the Hydros forum that has a schematic for the circuit https://forum.coralvuehydros.com/threads/diy-0-10v-input-switch-box-5-switches.316/ . Jeff also makes a button box if you just want to purchase it instead of making one. That DIY section has a lot of information on the Hydros ports including the pin outs of each with the exception of the direct drive port and that just drives motor coils of the popular DC brushless motors so there are only three pins. I have worked in electronics since the mid 70's. I retired from NXP semiconductor 3 years ago. The place I worked was Motorola when I started there. So the electronics side of things is kind of second nature for me. If you have questions about hooking something up the Hydros forum or their facebook community would be a good place to ask. I can answer a lot of things but I do not have everything that they have so if it is a question about something I do not have I may not have the answer but someone in one of those two places will probably be able to answer your question. Here is a link to the facebook group https://m.facebook.com/groups/hydrosgroup/?ref=share .

Thanks I’ll have to check it out. I’m an engineer who likes to tinker with things and learn. I haven’t done anything with electronics since I has a kid and even that was just some basic stuff.

 

[n2585722]

They added some new stuff to the Hydros. They now have float switches and a triple optical sensor that hook to the sense ports. I am already using float switches on the sense port but had then configured as optical sensors. I switched them to the float switch mode. Below are two screenshots from before i switched. It did not change how the worked but now does referr to then as float switches and has the icon for that.

Below are three screenshots when changing the sense mode setting. The first one is before changing it and the second one is the popup menu for selecting the mode type. The third is after changing the mode type. That was the only setting I needed to change.

Below is a screenshot of the same 2 pages in the first screen shot after the change. I have 10 float switches in use. There were already installed from the previous controller.

There is also a sense mode for the new triple level sensor. Now to the other feature they added. It is the alert output type. When you create an alert output it can turn on an output when that type of alert is active. If you use override to turn the output off it not only turns off the output it will also turn off the lights and sound on the controllers themselves. Below are the three alert outputs I created. There is one for each of the they alert levels. I do not have an output device assigned to these since I plan on using some lights that are controlled by the controller for double purpose duty.

The first screenshot below is a combiner used to combine the yellow alert output with the original Jelly fish crystal output for the lights. The second one is the combiner used to combine the orange alert and the original globe output for the globe lights. The third screenshot is the combiner for the red alert and left light houses. These are setup then same except for the two inputs and the output device on these. The use the combiner output type with two inputs and the combiner mode is OR since we want the output on if either input is active. These outputs now control the output ports that the corresponding lights are on.

The next output is alert active. It is a combiner type output and has the inputs. The inputs are the yellow alert, orange alert and red alert outputs. The combiner mode is OR here also since we want this output on if any of the three alerts are active. This is used to turn off the four original light outputs if there is an alert. That way we can turn on lights in a pattern to signify the different alerts. The lower level alert will be on if there is also a higher level alert. They start form yellow then orange and highest red.

Below are the original outputs with changes made to get this to work. The first one is the left side light houses, the second is the jelly fish crystal, the third is the globes. Those three have their device output changed to none since they are now used in the combiners outputs listed earlier. All have the depends on set to the alert active output and the dependency mode set to off if on. So here if there is an alert we want to disable these outputs since the alerts will light the lights in a certain pattern to signify the type of alert. The forth screenshot is the right light houses. The only change to this output was to add the depends on and dependency mode of off if on. This output is off on all alerts but when there is no alert all lights are either on or off. so if any are off with others on then there is an alert.

Below are two photos of the lights when in normal operation. I do have one light house on the left that has a bad bulb so it does not light. The first photo is with the lights off. The second one is when the lights are on which they are on from 5pm till 10pm. They belong to my wife so she does get something out of the controller.

The next photo is when there is a yellow alert. Only the jelly fish crystal is lit the others are off.

The photo below is an orange alert. The jelly fish light and globes are lit. They are easier to see than they appear in the photo since the lights in the globes are going on and off.

Below is a photo of red alert. The jelly fish crystal, globes and the left side light houses are lit and the right side lights houses are off. Of coarse a red alert is hard to miss since the sound on the controller is going off also. With 10 controllers it is quite loud. These lights are in the living room where we spend most of our time. The tank cannot be seen from that room. I wanted to try out this feature and decided to use lights that were already controlled by the controller and since these were in the living room I figured they would work with a little more complex setup. If I like it ai may add another wifi strip and setup some lights just for alerts but I am not sure what the wife would think of that idea. These are hers and already in place so no problem using them.

That is about if for for updates at this time.More to come though.

 

[n2585722]

I had a Cooler Guys fan fail. It just quit working and does not even try to turn. My guess is it is a electronic failure. I got it in August of 2021 so it almost lasted 2 years in a harsh environment since it was used for cooling the tank water as it flows through the sump. There are two fans doing this and both failed. The other would try to turn but would not turn unless you spin it by hand and it would eventually quit. That was a mechanical failure. I got two more Cooler Guys fan to replace the two bad fans. I moved the exhaust fans down to the cooling fan bracket for the sump since they do have some protection for use in that environment and used two backup fans in the exhaust position until I could get replacements. The first photo is of the failed fan after I clean off all the salt creep. The second photo is of the two new fans mounted to the fan bracket for the sump. The screenshot is of the temp graph. The 1.2 degree increase was during the replacement of the fans. Both the exhaust and cooling fans were off line when the temp increased. It takes both sets of fans to keep the water cool since it uses evaporative cooling. If there was no exhaust for the sump area the humidity and temp would increase to the point that evaporative cooling would no longer work. So there is two of each fan just in case of a failure of one fan it would continue was an impaired level until the failed fan can be replaced. I do keep a couple of spare fans of the same size. Eventually they will be Cooler Guys if all goes well with these.

 

[n2585722]

I got a Parwise meter this weekend to check my lighting with. I have a PAR meter but it does not do a spectrum graph of the light. So I decided I would try this out. I have a DIY LED fixture that has 6 neutral white LED that are driven by a 1.5 amp Meanwell LDD driver. These LED's will take 3 amps but the 1.5 amp driver is the largest one in the LDD series I use. There are 2 strings of 6 royal blue one driven by 1.5 amp LDD driver and one drive by a 1 amp LDD driver. There is also a string of 6 UVA LED's driven with a 700 ma LDD driver. I also have two RGBW LED's, a deep red LED and a Cyan LED. There is 4 strings with these. The deep red is in the string with the red diode of the RGBW's and the cyan is with the green string of the RBGW strings. All 4 of the strings are driven by 700 ma LDD drivers. The RGBW strings are controlled by my Archon at this point. The other high power strings are controlled by the Hydros system via 0-10v to PWM converters. The normal maximum settings are below.

Hydros:

Neutral White 55%
Royal Blue 45%
UVA 38%

Archon:

Red 50%
Green 50%
Blue 50%
White 60%

The first screenshot below is the lights when they were at there normal maximum settings listed above at coral depth. The second screenshot is with all lights at 100% at coral depth. The third screenshot is at the surface of the water at normal maximum settings. The forth screenshot is at the surface with all lights at 100%. At the moment all I have is a colony of Duncan coral and a coupe of candy cane corals but they seem to be doing very well under the max settings I have set. Also the light seems natural when looking at the tank and even any photos look ok without using any filters. There is a photo of the tank without using any type of filters under the LED settings listed above.

 

[n2585722]

I have a Hydros X10 and iV. The iV is a vessel that is used to do alkalinity testing using Hydros controllers. Below is a photo with the beaker in place. There are slots for 2 probes and it comes with three pieces of hard tubing to use with the flexible tubing and place them in the slots made for them in the top at the back. The iV has a magnetic stirrer built in that runs off of a drive port.

The X10 is a controller with 4 precision dosing pumps built into it. These pumps can have the flow rate varied. I have set one as low as 3ml a minute to as high as 100ml a minute. The pump use stepper motors and are bidirectional also. The X10 also has a probe port for either a pH or ORP probe. It also has a salinity port. If you are using this with the iV you will use these ports for it. It also has 2 drive ports. The iV requires 1 so that leaves one for another dosing pump. More on that later. It also has 4 sense ports. These can be used for several things such as temps sensors, leak detector, flow sensor and more. The photo is below. Power is supplied by either a power supply that it does come with or you can also use the Kraken to supply power when it becomes available. It will also supply power to the bus for controllers that do not have a power input other than the command bus.

I built a tray to sit the iV on and my KH Carer. It has a lip to hold a minimal amount of water. I also have a leak detector to place in the tray to halt the test if water is detected. Below is a photo of the tray in place on a cabinet. The camera on the front right corner is aimed at the tank. The tank to the left of the KH Carer is not in use but in case of an emergency it could be filled and used I guess.

I have it setup to do alkalinity testing. It also get a sample reading for salinity and pH just before the test starts. I have a Apera salinity probe. It is the same one that comes in the salinity kit which is the probe and 2 bottles of the 2 calibration fluids needed for calibration. The test sequence is basically a drain of the beaker using the drain pump. I have mine going back to the sump. I am also using a Intllab dosing pump set to 50ml a minute for the drain pump. It is the one in the bottom of the photo above, Once it runs a specified time it stops and the fill pump comes on and fills above the normal amount for the test. It turns on the stirrer for a few seconds. It then drains using the fill pump this time. It stops after it has had plenty of time to empty the beaker. Then it starts a fill using the fill pump long enough to start filling the beaker. This is to make sure the fill tubing is full. The drain pump comes on again long enough to make sure the beaker is again empty. It then fills the beaker with 100ml of tank water for the test. It stirs and for a few seconds then get sample readings for pH and salinity. It then starts dispensing reaget into the beaker and measure the result. It keeps this up until the pH gets to around 4.05. It then stops and drains the beaker while the reading is calculated for alkalinity. There are several methods you can choose from when setting up as to how the reading is calculated. once the beaker has had time to completely drain. It fill with tank water and the stirrer is turn on for a few seconds. then it remains idol until the next test. The reason for the drain and fill after the test is if the pH probe were to sit in the pH 4 solution till the next test the pH reading would be about .1 low from a realtime probe reading. So it sits in near normal tank water till the next test. I originally had this setup stand alone with just the X10, iV, drain pump and leak detector and also controlled a wifi strip so I could power down the KH Carer if a leak was detected. It will also halt the iV test. I now have the X10 in my collective with my other controllers. Since then I have added a water level sensor and a flow sensor to the inputs on the X10. I now only have one sense port left at the tank. That is about it for this post. I will post more detain on the setup for doing this along with the two pumps on the X10 I am using for dynamic dosing.

 

[n2585722]

Now on to the setup for the X10 using the iV for testing. There are quite a few screenshots so it will take more than one post dor this. The first screen is the top part of the iV output type. I named it 42g iV Test. The output type is IV (Beta). I guess they have yet to remove the beta from the name. A newer feature is the arrow point to the right corner next to the selection. In you have not created the input or output and click the arrow it will start the creation. If you have one created and selected Like I do here it will got to the edit screen for the input or output. I will go through them in order.

The first one is for the reagent pump. For this I used pump 1 on the X10. The output type in the case is smart doser which I have selected. All 4 of the dosing pumps on the X10 are smart dosing pumps which means the Hydro can control either or both flow rate and flow direction along with run time. A simple dose the only control is run time and you have to enter into the Hydros the flow rate of the pump. The X10 can control flow rate and flow direction on the 4 pumps it has built in. The output device is doser 1 on the X10. For this one it is recommended to use a flow rate of 3ml a minute. So that is what I have selected here. I have notify when reservoir below to 100ml which is as low as it will go. I usually fill the container up to a little more than a liter at a time. I set the notification level to yellow, Since all I have set is for push notifications for alerts there is no difference between yellow and orange as far is the push notifications but I do have some lights in my living room that will turn on if not already on in a different pattern for yellow, orange or red. Otherwise they are either all on or all off depending on time of day. They are actually my wife's ornaments that light up and the Hydros has been controlling them sinceI got it. Then there is calibrate doser but I wait to do that after everything has been setup.

The next output is the drain pump. For this one I am using a separate dosing pump form the X10 since 8 wanted to use 2 of the precision pumps for dosing instead of testing. The drain pump does not have to be a precision dosing pump since all it does is empty the beaker in the iV. On mine it runs for a while after the beaker is dry. I guess this is to insure it is as empty as it can get. So this one is just a simple doser. The pump I used has a flow rate of 50ml a minute so that is selected for the pump speed, The output device is the second drive port on the X10. I have not set the power level or notification for this pump yet. In fact I did not calibrate this pump since it has been emptying the beaker without any issues. I did check it before I started using it and adjusted it to 50ml a minute before using it for this so I guess it is probably close to that. It is a Intllab 12v dosing pump that has an adjustable speed.

The next output is the fill pump. This uses the second dosing pump on the X10. It is also the smart doser type. The output type is doser 2 on the X10. This one has a recommended speed of 100ml a minute but since I was not that interested in getting the fastest test I set it to 75ml a minute hoping that will add some life to the pump head and tubing. These are the same pump heads as the Kamoer F4's with the exception the tubing is a larger size than the F4. Since this pump is not pumping from a reservoir I set the notify when reservoir is below to 0 so it will not alert for low reservoir. AgainI waited until everything was setup before calibrating anything.

The next screenshot is the lower part of the iV output settings. The stirrer on the iV is plugged into drive port 1 on the X10. So I set that on the iV output. The power range and alert for that I do not have setup.

The next setting is the pH input for the iV this is a realtime input so it is only accurate to the tank at the initial readings part of the test. This input type is probe port which is a port for either a pH or ORP probe. In this case pH so the probe mode is pH. The probe port is probe port 1 on the X10 which is the only probe port on the X10. The safe range and graph rage should be at the max or near it since there will be a wide range from below 4 to whatever you highest pH reading for your tank are. For temperature input I use the temp input for the temp sensor in my sump where the water for the test is pulled from. It is on a different controller. When I had this setup as stand alone I did not have a temp input setup since ai did not have a spare temp sensor to use. The X10 dose have 4 sense ports so you could add a temp sensor to do this if you want to use this stand alone and want to use temp compensation. I have the offset set to -.01 so that it matches my in sump realtime pH probe most of the time. Occasionally they will differ as much as .02 but that is very close considering one is not in the sump and I have not had any that would agree exactly all the time and I have had 4 to 5 in my sump connected to modules for my Archon when I was beta testing for Digital Aquatics. If the module had a pH port I had a pH probe connected to it for testing purposes. The ther are the three calibration points which I did a while back. It is about time to do it again now. I have notification level set to none since it will more than likely drop below the minimum at the end of the test while it is draining before refilling. The next setting is is invisible. This is a new setting and when on this output does not normally show on any pages or is available to select for page view. The default for this when creating from the iV output is on. They figured it might be confusing to some to have both the realtime output and the sampled output on the page since this one is not accurate most of the time anyway. If you want invisible inputs to show on a particular page you can set that in the settings for that page,

The next input on the iV output is a new type for the Hydros. It uses a conductivity port which is new. The X10 is the first controller to get this port, I would imagine there will be others that have this in the future. The type for this input is salinity port. the probe port is salinity port 1 on the X10. I am using a Apera K10 probe for this. I think that is the same one that is in the salinity kit along with 2 bottles of calibration fluid. I have the probe K set to 10. You can choose either 1 or 10. So if you want to you can use a K1 probe but my understanding the K10 is a better fit. I set the safe range from 30.1 to 36.2 for now. You can use ppt, SG or PSU for the salinity readings that is set in the options menu with other units of measure. I used PPT since I have used that from my Digital Aquatics days. I set the graph limits from 20.1 to 50.2 This is quit wide and has not got near any of these limits. When I used their calibration fluid I found out my salinity was high. It is over 36 on the Hydros. I calibrated my Pinpoint salinity meter with the 35ppt solution that came from CoralVue and it also shows high at 55.0ms. I calibrated my refractometer with a solution from BRS and it is close to the same ans the CoralVue. So i guess my Pinpoint solution is off compared to both of them. I have mixed my next batch of fresh salt water to 50ms on the pinpoint. Since it is AWC a small amount a day it will take a while to get it down. The temp input on this uses the same input as the pH input already discussed. The offset on this is set to 0. This does use 2 point calibration. One is at 28ppt and the other at 35ppt. I have the safe rage set wide on this since the reading drops during the alkalinity testing as reagent is added to the beaker. I left the graph range settings at max. There will be a sampled reading input setup for this and the pH also so safe range and graph setting can be setup on them and those are taken during the initial reading point in the test. I will have post those on a different post since this one is already near the limit, I have the notification level set to orange on this input. Is invisible is also defaulted to on for this input as well. That is it for this post. More to come.

 

[n2585722]

Now to the sampled inputs, The first is the one for alkalinity. Below is the setup for the sampled alkalinity. They type is iV test. The particular iV tester is selected since there can be more than one in a system if you have more than one tank that needs testing. Then the test type is selected. In this case it is alkalinity. Then you set the safe range and graph limits you want. Then there is an offset setting you can use to set it to match another alkalinity test if needed. The stale sample notification is the length of time it will go between readings before it considers the reading stale or old. Notification level is the level of importance of the notification. In Hydros there is none, yellow, orange or red. None is no notification.

Next is the pH sampled input. The type again is iV test and the tester is the same as the alkalinity since I only have the one. The test for this is sampled pH. The rest of the settings are about the same as alkalinity except it is pH values on the safe range and graph value limits.

The last one is the sampled salinity input. the type and is the same as the other two. The test is sampled salinity in this case. The rest of the setting are the same except for the values on safe range and graph value limits.



The next screenshot is of my input page for my hex tank where the X10 and iV are at. The sampled and static inputs have the date and time of the last test which is what is being displayed in the tile. The static input is a new inout you can setup and enter data from manual test auch as the Hanna tester. The other new input is from a flow meter on the output of my return pump. The salinity probe for the Hydros is reading about 1 higher than the pinpoint was. If i use the Hydros calibration fluid om the Pinpoint it reads the same as Hydros. So I am working on slowly dropping the level some. I used BRS refracto juice on my refractomer to calibrate it and it reads the same as the Hydros. I tested the Pinpoint calibration fluid with it and it read just shy of 36. Not sure which is right but neither is far enough fro the other to be to concerned.

 

[tritonpower]

That is sweet. Considering the same setup for my tank. Have you double checked the alkalinity values with a salifert test and is it close?
Are you going to connect your alk to the X10 to allow it to adjust the alk on it's own?