Inkbird Failure with Apex Redundancy

[Matt Lusk]

I have an Inkbird 306A controlling two 150w heaters. Occasionally the Inkbird will show an "Abnormal" alarm (at normal temperature-78F) and will cut power to the heaters, which can drop the temp of my tank about 2-degrees F overnight. The only way to reset the Inkbird's alarm is by cycling the power to the Inkbird. Can I prevent the tank temp from dropping below 77 and use my Apex to automatically cycle power to the Inkbird, to reset the alarm for me?

If my Inkbird fails and heaters get stuck on, my Apex is already programmed for redundancy:

I'd like to add another line of programming that will cycle the power to the Inkbird, thus resetting any abnormal alarms that happen overnight. How can I convert the following sentence into Apex Program language? "If temperature drops below 77F for more than 60 minutes" (in the case of an abnormal alarm and the Inkbird turns my heaters off), "then off. Defer 30 seconds then on" (to reset inkbird alarm and turn heat back on). Could it be something like:

"If Tmp < 77.0 Defer 060:00 Then Off"
"Defer 000:30 Then On"

The only issue I see with adding this into the program is: if the tank temp for some reason naturally drops below 77 (and there is no Inkbird alarm), it would only let the heaters work for 60 minutes before cycling their power, thus prolonging a natural heat cycle. Am I better off waking up to a tank at 76 degrees and resetting the Inkbird manually?

 

[Rtaylor]

76 degrees is nothing to worry about at all

 

[n2585722]

Another way would be to use an Inkbird with each heater and also use two outlets on your Apex. Even better would be to have each on a separate power bar. That said temp naturally falling on a larger tank is nowhere near as bad as a tank overheating. I had rolling blackouts last February that lasted almost a week. The temp outside was below 32 that whole time. My tank did get down to just below 70 during that time. It took a couple of days to get it back up to 76 once the power was back on for good. Luckily I didn't loose anything when this happened. I think the temp changing too quickly would be more of an issue than the change. I had a FOWLR tank in the 90's and didn't have any heaters at all. it was a 110 gallon tank and the house has central air and heat so as a general rule the temp doesn't change much in the house anyway.

 

[AquaKey]

@Matt Lusk the error you might be getting on the inkbird is that it failed to reach the set temperature during the amount of time set in the settings, then it stops. Which would mean at night your heater isn't powerful enough to get up to temp when nighttime room temp drops. Hope that helps.

 

[dmsc2fs]

Why use a low budget entry level device like an InkBird if your already into Apex quality? If you’re getting errors maybe it’s time to switch to a Ranco.

I opened an InkBird that was giving errors and decided I wouldn’t trust them.