DIY Reef Dosing Controller Project

raz7728 · May 13, 2026

Hi reefers

I’m working on a small DIY touchscreen reef companion for my own tank and wanted to share the first home screen idea.

The goal is to help keep track of ALK / CA / MG, dosing reminders, dosing container levels, pump status, and basic reef stability.

It’s still an early prototype, nothing for sale — just something I’m building and testing.

I’d love some honest feedback:

What would you like a small reef companion like this to do?

And what parts of reef automation would you personally not trust?

The Blunt Oracle · May 14, 2026

Nice work!

UI looks nice, information density is high but easy to read on a larger display - might be an issue on a small touchscreen though so you may need to split up into pages depending on your screen size.

In terms of reef automation people wouldn't trust, its going to likely vary per person and what has bitten them in the past.

In my experience it was a friend who lost years of hard work and thousands of dollars worth of corals & fish due to a chiller that welded a relay, the compressor was stuck running and bought the large tank down to 11C while they were at work. So it was more about lack of automation to gracefully deal with or alert to a fault or issue.

raz7728 · May 14, 2026

The Blunt Oracle said:
Nice work!

UI looks nice, information density is high but easy to read on a larger display - might be an issue on a small touchscreen though so you may need to split up into pages depending on your screen size.

In terms of reef automation people wouldn't trust, its going to likely vary per person and what has bitten them in the past.

In my experience it was a friend who lost years of hard work and thousands of dollars worth of corals & fish due to a chiller that welded a relay, the compressor was stuck running and bought the large tank down to 11C while they were at work. So it was more about lack of automation to gracefully deal with or alert to a fault or issue.

Thank you for your feed-back.