Inkbird and Apex

[Popeye]

I am running two 500w Finnex titanium heaters with a inkbird and have my inkbird plugged into my Apex. Everytime my heaters turn on i get a high amp warning. What am I doing wrong or what should I do differently?

 

[TheHarold]

I am running two 500w Finnex titanium heaters with a inkbird and have my inkbird plugged into my Apex. Everytime my heaters turn on i get a high amp warning. What am I doing wrong or what should I do differently?

Read the EB832 Manual. The max load per outlet is 7 amps, and two 500w heaters draw more than that (8+ amps).

You risk damaging the EB832 and a potential fire with the overloaded circuit. You CANNOT have both of these heaters plugged into the same outlet.

Source: https://help.neptunesystems.com/downloads/docs/EB832_Guide.pdf

Solution 1: Try running one heater. Looking at your temperature graph, your pair of heaters may be overpowered anyway and is causing rapid temperature oscillations.

Solution 2: Run the heaters on separate outlets. I suggest using one as a primary (ex. set to 78), and the other as a backup (ex. set to 77.6). That should prevent fast oscillation + heavy load when it is not needed.

Feel free to provide more details about the heater outlet code/setpoint, whether you have calibrated the inkbird temp reading to the Apex reading, and the inkbird setpoint.

 

[Popeye]

Ill try running one heater to see how that looks

 

[Kingsley_Reef]

Ill try running one heater to see how that looks

You don’t have to use just one heater you can still use two just use two outlets on the 832 and let the apex control the heater that’s not on the heater controller you can set this up easily through task manager

 

[Popeye]

You don’t have to use just one heater you can still use two just use two outlets on the 832 and let the apex control the heater that’s not on the heater controller you can set this up easily through task manager

I thought of doing that too. I'll see how one heater performs and then maybe go this route.

 

[TheHarold]

You don’t have to use just one heater you can still use two just use two outlets on the 832 and let the apex control the heater that’s not on the heater controller you can set this up easily through task manager

I would recommend keeping the inkbird as an emergency temp cutoff/redundancy.

It is too easy to cook a tank due to a defective Apex probe, accidentally pulling the apex probe out of the water, accidentally toggling the heater outlet to “ON” instead of “AUTO”, an Apex glitch that reassigns modules, etc.

Temperature is very unforgiving.

 

[Popeye]

I would recommend keeping the inkbird as an emergency temp cutoff/redundancy.

It is too easy to cook a tank due to a defective Apex probe, accidentally pulling the apex probe out of the water, accidentally toggling the heater outlet to “ON” instead of “AUTO”, an Apex glitch that reassigns modules, etc.

Temperature is very unforgiving.

I did leave the one heater plugged into inkbird as main control. Then I have apex set +/- 2° off inkbird. So apex should never shut off unless Inkbird fails.

 

[Popeye]

Thanks for everyone's help. Seems running just one will work and it's spread out a little more too