MikeTheNewbie
Active Member
Hello fellow reefers, I recently came across Grafana, an open source tool that helps create really useful dashboards for time series data. I gave it a try and I'm really pleased with the results.
I'd say it might be more of an advanced topic since it needs some understanding of software but, ironically, I think it benefits new reefers like me the most.
It has helped me better understand what is going up in my tank (build thread here), visualize and understand trends, I spotted and fixed a problem with my MP40 configuration, and I'm still trying to figure out the relation between CO2, lights, and pH in my tank.
Here are some of the charts I use the most
The top left chart shows the temperature of my Display Tank compared with my basement and the rest of the house (the tank is in the basement).
The top right chart shows the tank temperature in blue and the power drawn by the heaters (I use 2 x BRS 300W Titanium Heaters)
The bottom left chart is an attempt to make sense of pH and CO2. I added the ORP by mistake and decided to leave it there to see if I could spot any correlation. You can see the daily pH swing of almost 0.2 and you can also see that the CO2 levels go up during the day when I'm at the basement. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I haven't seen much correlation between pH and CO2 in my case. Most of the swing is tied to the lighting as far as I can see.
Lastly, on the bottom right, I was trying to spot correlations between the room humidity and my salinity but my Neptune Auto Top-of Kit seems to be doing a good job and maintaining salinity in a +/- 0.2 range. I trust the Auto Top Off more than the accuracy of the salinity/conductivity probe to be honest
So this is the new feature I added to my dashboard. I do manual water tests using Hanna checkers and RedSea tritation test kits. I used to save the info in a spread sheet but last week I started loading the data directly to the same database that stores the info from Apex (InfluxDB). The pH chart shows the sad truth about my pH. The pH measurement in the first group came from Apex and is inaccurate. The one in this group is the one that I have done manually with my trusted Hanna checker. The Alkalinity increase is because I started dosing sodium carbonate hoping it will help with pH. I haven't paid attention to the high magnesium.
Below is the web form I'm using to manually load the results but I'm planning to do some automation once I get my hands on an automatic tester.
Finally, the measurements of my 2 MP40s. It is based on power drawn from the Neptune Energy Bar. The example shows how for some reason when I was using Anti-sync with the master MP40 running Lagoon at 50% the anti-sync MP40 was running very slowly (see the highlight on the left chart with the Left MP40 drawing 14.1W and the right one drawing 6.12W). Now I just set them independently. You can see that on the later readings. The drop on 6/20 was a power outage :S
So, again, just trying to gauge interest to see if its worth to spend time documenting the setup so others can follow.
Please answer the survey. Would you be interested in learning more about the setup of Grafana+Apex?
I'd say it might be more of an advanced topic since it needs some understanding of software but, ironically, I think it benefits new reefers like me the most.
It has helped me better understand what is going up in my tank (build thread here), visualize and understand trends, I spotted and fixed a problem with my MP40 configuration, and I'm still trying to figure out the relation between CO2, lights, and pH in my tank.
Here are some of the charts I use the most
The top left chart shows the temperature of my Display Tank compared with my basement and the rest of the house (the tank is in the basement).
The top right chart shows the tank temperature in blue and the power drawn by the heaters (I use 2 x BRS 300W Titanium Heaters)
The bottom left chart is an attempt to make sense of pH and CO2. I added the ORP by mistake and decided to leave it there to see if I could spot any correlation. You can see the daily pH swing of almost 0.2 and you can also see that the CO2 levels go up during the day when I'm at the basement. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I haven't seen much correlation between pH and CO2 in my case. Most of the swing is tied to the lighting as far as I can see.
Lastly, on the bottom right, I was trying to spot correlations between the room humidity and my salinity but my Neptune Auto Top-of Kit seems to be doing a good job and maintaining salinity in a +/- 0.2 range. I trust the Auto Top Off more than the accuracy of the salinity/conductivity probe to be honest
So this is the new feature I added to my dashboard. I do manual water tests using Hanna checkers and RedSea tritation test kits. I used to save the info in a spread sheet but last week I started loading the data directly to the same database that stores the info from Apex (InfluxDB). The pH chart shows the sad truth about my pH. The pH measurement in the first group came from Apex and is inaccurate. The one in this group is the one that I have done manually with my trusted Hanna checker. The Alkalinity increase is because I started dosing sodium carbonate hoping it will help with pH. I haven't paid attention to the high magnesium.
Below is the web form I'm using to manually load the results but I'm planning to do some automation once I get my hands on an automatic tester.
Finally, the measurements of my 2 MP40s. It is based on power drawn from the Neptune Energy Bar. The example shows how for some reason when I was using Anti-sync with the master MP40 running Lagoon at 50% the anti-sync MP40 was running very slowly (see the highlight on the left chart with the Left MP40 drawing 14.1W and the right one drawing 6.12W). Now I just set them independently. You can see that on the later readings. The drop on 6/20 was a power outage :S
So, again, just trying to gauge interest to see if its worth to spend time documenting the setup so others can follow.
Please answer the survey. Would you be interested in learning more about the setup of Grafana+Apex?
