HELP! PH and Conductivity completely out of wack

[VJV]

Hi, my Temp probe bit the dust a couple of weeks ago (about one year old) and now the PH and Conductivity are acting up.

pH is abnormally low (it has always been between 7,9 and 8,3 daily) and today it suddenly spiked up to 36(!!!!!!) and now is showing 7,35 and dropping.

All my SPS are perfectly fine so I guess these two probes have also bit the dust...?

Why would this happen to probes that have less than one year of work...???

 

[VJV]

And off course, I am going on vacation for two weeks tomorrow... [emoji30]

 

[WWIII]

So you got a new temp probe correct? Have you tried to recalibrate them? I suspect something else, just not sure what? Is your redox always that low?

 

[VJV]

So you got a new temp probe correct? Have you tried to recalibrate them? I suspect something else, just not sure what? Is your redox always that low?

Yes, the temp is new but the others are not. However, I have now detected the problem. Last week I decided to use the free head of my Doser 2 to work as ATO and bought a optical level sensor.

I have noticed now that the water level has dropped exposing the probes to air, hence the wacky values


However, this is. Or necessarily a good thing as I now am about to leave and do not have a working ATO. It worked just fine for one week and today simply stopped working.


My previous ATO is in my frag tank so I now need to decide if I will kill the frags I have there or not... I guess there is no choice. I will move the frags into the display and re install the trusty Tunze ATO in my main display again...

My evaporation is currently less than one gallon a day so I am not too impressed to see this fail in less than a week...

 

[WWIII]

Well glad to hear the probe issue was simple, but agree that 1 week on the doser head doesn't seem right. I figured with those values, something was seriously wrong, simple or not so simple.

I just have a small eheim pump in my ato container and have it triggered through the powerbar via the optical sensor for my ato setup. Would it be possible to get a small pump and free up one of the spots on your powerbar before vacation? I do have a float valve as backup, but in a pinch would feel pretty comfortable with just the optical for a short amount of time. You can limit the run time as well for a safety backup. I know maybe not ideal, but maybe an option?

How much water was the doser putting back in per day roughly? I know the maxi can handle a lot, but the doser 2/2.1 has some ato limitations. Still, sounds strange to stop in such a short amount of time. Is the alarm going off? Do you have it to auto reset the alarm? I also had to put a trigger delay in my optical switch to prevent it from going on/off/on too much. Just a few ideas/things to think about off the top of my head.

Edit - see that your evaporation is around 1 gallon a day. I think the doser 2/2.1 should be able to handle that. Are you home? Can you manually push the doser head or is it dead?

 

[VJV]

Well glad to hear the probe issue was simple, but agree that 1 week on the doser head doesn't seem right. I figured with those values, something was seriously wrong, simple or not so simple.

I just have a small eheim pump in my ato container and have it triggered through the powerbar via the optical sensor for my ato setup. Would it be possible to get a small pump and free up one of the spots on your powerbar before vacation? I do have a float valve as backup, but in a pinch would feel pretty comfortable with just the optical for a short amount of time. You can limit the run time as well for a safety backup. I know maybe not ideal, but maybe an option?

How much water was the doser putting back in per day roughly? I know the maxi can handle a lot, but the doser 2/2.1 has some ato limitations. Still, sounds strange to stop in such a short amount of time. Is the alarm going off? Do you have it to auto reset the alarm? I also had to put a trigger delay in my optical switch to prevent it from going on/off/on too much. Just a few ideas/things to think about off the top of my head.

Edit - see that your evaporation is around 1 gallon a day. I think the doser 2/2.1 should be able to handle that. Are you home? Can you manually push the doser head or is it dead?

Thanks [emoji106]

So, to answer your questions:

1- Evap is about 1 gallon per day, I believe actually significantly less than that

2- need to check the alarm thing.

3- the only reason I wanted to use the Doser was to reduce clutter in the sump. The Tunze ATO is brilliant but it occupies one additional outlet and has about 27 wires going between the pump, controller, etc.


4- the pump of the ATO is working. When I press it to manually dose it works just fine. So I am thinking the problem could be with the sensor but I will check what you mentioned about the alarm reset.

 

[WWIII]

Cool, glad you're making sense out of my ramblings. Haha. Yeah, check the alarm deal. It may have to do with the run time if one is set. I'm not sure how it works with the doser head, but I assume the same. So if the water doesn't fill up above the optical sensor in time it will shut off and trigger alarm. (I don't know what the factory time is) I have mine set to 3 mins, but my pump throws a lot of water in the sump very quickly. Also, check the delay in the triggering of the optical sensor. I have mine set to 10 seconds. So it either has to be "dry" for 10 seconds or "wet" (covered) for 10 seconds to trigger the pump on or off. That way it isn't going back and forth every time the optical sensor state switches for 1 second.

Those are some things to check. Maybe @Marco@GHLUSA or @Ditto have some other ideas or can explain it better.

 

[VJV]

Cool, glad you're making sense out of my ramblings. Haha. Yeah, check the alarm deal. It may have to do with the run time if one is set. I'm not sure how it works with the doser head, but I assume the same. So if the water doesn't fill up above the optical sensor in time it will shut off and trigger alarm. (I don't know what the factory time is) I have mine set to 3 mins, but my pump throws a lot of water in the sump very quickly. Also, check the delay in the triggering of the optical sensor. I have mine set to 10 seconds. So it either has to be "dry" for 10 seconds or "wet" (covered) for 10 seconds to trigger the pump on or off. That way it isn't going back and forth every time the optical sensor state switches for 1 second.

Those are some things to check. Maybe @Marco@GHLUSA or @Ditto have some other ideas or can explain it better.

[emoji4]

Well, I do not have any delay set, and the max on time is 10min. In 10min it pumps 400ml.

I do have the reset upon alarm option on. But no mater what I do (manually remove the sensor from the water) and it simply refuses to pump anything.

But as I said previously, the pump is working perfectly when I choose to manually dose... [emoji848]

 

[Ditto]

@WWIII thank you for tagging me

@VJV I use the optical sensor's in my sump and use them for ATO function. I am currently using two, but you can also do it with on.

Your stating right now even with the optical sensor out of the water it showing it not working.

What port is your Optical sensor plugged into?

In GCC Desktop App, if you choose the Level Sensor option after connecting to the P4 your seeing in my picture my Control Circuit 1 is currently ATO with 2 Senors, and it is using Sensor 1 and Sensor 2.

If you look down at my sensors on Settings and state of the level sensors

Your going to notice 1 is show a State of blank and a state delayed of bank
Your seeing Sensor 2 is show a state of X and a state delayed of X

Your Reaction time should be 1s, as you want to have some flexibility if there turbulence in the sump.
Your Max On time should be the Max on time your Doser should ever be on to do ATO a great safety feature as if it exceeds this time putting water into the tank to reach your optical sensor it will stop pumping water and generate an alert.

I assume this was working and just stopped working?

Step 1
When you pull your sensor out of the water do you see any changes in the Settings and states of the level sensor?

 

[VJV]

@WWIII thank you for tagging me

@VJV I use the optical sensor's in my sump and use them for ATO function. I am currently using two, but you can also do it with on.

Your stating right now even with the optical sensor out of the water it showing it not working.

What port is your Optical sensor plugged into?

In GCC Desktop App, if you choose the Level Sensor option after connecting to the P4 your seeing in my picture my Control Circuit 1 is currently ATO with 2 Senors, and it is using Sensor 1 and Sensor 2.

If you look down at my sensors on Settings and state of the level sensors

Your going to notice 1 is show a State of blank and a state delayed of bank
Your seeing Sensor 2 is show a state of X and a state delayed of X

Your Reaction time should be 1s, as you want to have some flexibility if there turbulence in the sump.
Your Max On time should be the Max on time your Doser should ever be on to do ATO a great safety feature as if it exceeds this time putting water into the tank to reach your optical sensor it will stop pumping water and generate an alert.

I assume this was working and just stopped working?

Step 1
When you pull your sensor out of the water do you see any changes in the Settings and states of the level sensor?

Many thanks Ditto [emoji106]. Indeed, everything was working until it stopped. Looking at the PH chart it had stopped about 10h before.

I have it set as Level1 and have changed the reaction time to 10s. I unplugged the Doser from the outlet and replugged it, and now it seems to be working...

But I am not comfortable at all leaving it alone for the next week... [emoji51]

 

[VJV]

Oh, and it is the stand alone Doser so it only has one port for level sensors.

 

[Ditto]

Glad it it working!!! Are you on the latest firmware on the doser?

 

[VJV]

Glad it it working!!! Are you on the latest firmware on the doser?

Yes. It states that it is up to date. Wondering if what made it go off had something to do with the fact that I had the dosing container size set to 2700ml, as when I tried to change it to 50.000ml it would not let me do it.... maybe it thought the container was empt ph and stopped dosing? I also did reset that to the max possible which is 30.000ml, though the actual size would be 47.000ml

 

[VJV]

Even though I sometimes forget to click "Refill" on the other containers that I am using for the balling solutions and the doser thinks they are empty but still continues to dose...

 

[VJV]

Ok i am on vacations and the ATO function failed again. Good thing I decided to check my probe sensors and they were all reading zero (probes out of the water)...

My housekeeper is now manually replenishing the Evaporated water with RO and I will need to drive 250km back home and buy an ATO before coming back...

As EVERYONE keeps saying, so not make changes before going on vacations!!!

I am just wondering what could be the issue here... what is it causing the ATO to stop working after one or two days...?

I may need to start a new thread to see if I get some help from Vinny or someone else...