Help programming dosing pump on apex

[Reefinmike]

Hey all, after two months of nearly daily testing and manual dosing i’m final trying automated dosing. I have perpetually low ph from high co2 in my house so i’m want To dose kalk. My tank should be able to consume ~1200ml of saturated kalk per day. My ph jumps with my display lighting so i’d like to dose between midnight to 4pm. My 50ml/min pump should be on once an hour for 90 seconds however if possible i may split that up, twice an hour for 45 seconds. I’m admittedly an apex novice and i’m terified of nuking my tank. I’ve tried wrapping my head around the oscillating code and even used a code generator. In both instances, the pump will kick on at the proper time but wont turn off. I have tried setting a couple time commands with the same result. I have this on my eb832 with relay outlets. My apex is hard wired to my router and the outlet switches off and on when flipped in fusion. I haven’t tinkered with this too much so user error is highly likely however from my understanding of the osc code and timer setup, it should be operating correctly. Here is the code from a generator i used. It turns on at the proper time but stays on longer than it should.

Fallback OFF
OSC 000:00/001:30/058:30 Then ON
If Time 16:00 to 23:59 Then OFF
If pH > 8.25 Then OFF

I would like it to be on from midnight to 4pm once an hour for 90 seconds at a time. It should be off If the apex has lost communication and if the ph is above 8.25. I would also like to incorporate float switches to work in conjunction with my ro/di top off. Currently I top off with a gravity fed reservoir, solenoid and float valve. I’m using code generated from the ato task using two floats(ato_L and ato_H). The two floats are offset to trip about 4oz apart. This setup has worked wonderfully for months. Is there a reliable way to use these switches to cut off the kalk dosing only if absolutely necessary so the ato and kalk aren’t constantly battling each other? Or would it be best to add a third float slightly above the ato floats.

This dosing stuff scares me, i like to maximize redundancy to prevent nuking my tank. I’m weighing the benefits of putting a solenoid on the kalk line vs a float valve...

Thanks for any advice

 

[laverda]

Your code looks good to me. Maybe try it on a different outlet. What dosing pump are you using? Try plugging a pump or something that uses more electricity in place of the doser and see what happens.

 

[chris k.]

I have just gotten a new apex also and set up dosing programs. I was reading older articles on here when someone said that outlet 4 and 8 are mechanical switches. And the rest are triac? Switches. On low draw equipment like a dosing pump you want to use the mechanical switches which are 4 and 8 on the eb832. That was an older post but i put my dosers on those. The triac outlets sometimes cant read the low load of the dosers. (This is just what i have read on older posts for programming the apex) hope this helps.

 

[Breadman03]

The EB832 uses all mechanically switched outlets. They switched it because most people don't switch outlets hundreds of times daily like was common before fancy wavemakers.

 

[Reefinmike]

Back for an update. The brs 50ml/min doser is on my eb832 power bar which has mechanical relay outlets that can turn off with low wattage items. I've heard plenty of horror stories of people setting up dosing pumps on triac outlets to turn on and fail to turn off. I split the doser outlet with a small koralia to mix the area the kalk drips. This runs ~7 watts so I may set up power monitoring.

I took a break from trying for a day and tried again with the code I posted above. It's working as expected but I'm still a little leary on trusting it 100%. Until I implement a second layer of redundancy I am limiting the kalk reservoir to 1/2 gallon. I'm leaning towards adding a third float switch about 1/2 gallon above my ato floats. If the float is tripped it will cut the flow with the solenoid and send an alarm. My only concern is that the apex solenoids I currently use have some resistance to the flow when they are open. I'm not sure if other solenoids have the same resistance and if it will cause premature wear on the pump or inconsistent doses. A float valve is cheap, doesn't use outlets and is near fail safe however I'm not too keen of putting the line below the level of the kalk reservoir. I imagine some catastrophic doser failure where the wheel breaks and it siphons in a half gallon of kalk before the float valve hopefully stops the flow.