What's the most valuable feature of a controller?

[Webslinger]

Yep if your controller is not reliable then you are just wasting your time waiting for a software bug to wipe out your tank.

Unless you have the $20 one. Simplicity works sometimes

 

[robbyg]

with the eb832 you have individual outlet power monitoring you can set up to tell you if equipment is failing or has failed, or just needs cleaning, so yes it can, and with heart beat fusion tells you the controller might have failed in some way.

The power monitoring is a nice feature but I have rarely had problems that involved a major power consumption change. Most problems have involved leaks or stuff getting stuck on.
Heartbeat is a nice feature but I wish it would notify me within a couple of minutes instead of an hour. A lot can happen in an hour!

 

[G Santana]

Gearing up to relaunch my tank, I purchased led lights and am looking at controllers but skimmers were definitely around 20 yrs ago. They first started with air stones and graduated quickly to venturi valves which I still have.
But monitoring is gone 21st century BIGTIME

 

[sixline]

I just got a controller (an Apex EL) and am finding the temperature and PH monitoring over time to be useful. Also, the temperature control, for example turning on and off heaters, chillers, and fans based on temperature seems useful even though I haven't used it yet!

Also, the feeding control is nice.

 

[BZOFIQ]

with the eb832 you have individual outlet power monitoring you can set up to tell you if equipment is failing or has failed, or just needs cleaning, so yes it can, and with heart beat fusion tells you the controller might have failed in some way.

Aware...but you missed the point.

Telling me that my controller failed is great, that controller not dying in the first place is MUCH MORE great.

 

[ScottB]

Yep if your controller is not reliable then you are just wasting your time waiting for a software bug to wipe out your tank.

Agreed, everything breaks at some point, controllers included. My APEX energy bar went bad while I was skiing early March. My phone lit up. I called my LFS and he sent a service guy over. Plugged most things into an $11 power strip.

I spend way too much money on ridiculous SPS to not have this layer of protection running. Even at Neptune level of pricing, it is a drop in the expense bucket relative to a larger reef system.

Did I have APEX for my 16G? Nope. 45G JBJ? Nope. RS 250 (65G)? Nope, but probably should have. But now with 2 systems and +440G of volume? Crazy not to have the ability to monitor.

 

[Webslinger]

Gearing up to relaunch my tank, I purchased led lights and am looking at controllers but skimmers were definitely around 20 yrs ago. They first started with air stones and graduated quickly to venturi valves which I still have.
But monitoring is gone 21st century BIGTIME

A airstone in a pvc tube didn't work very well. They are no comparison to the pump skimmers of today

 

[Biglew11]

The power monitoring is a nice feature but I have rarely had problems that involved a major power consumption change. Most problems have involved leaks or stuff getting stuck on.
Heartbeat is a nice feature but I wish it would notify me within a couple of minutes instead of an hour. A lot can happen in an hour!

stuff getting stuck on you could set timers function, if on for >00:00 then triger alert,

for dosing 2 part solution, depends on what your using for dosing pump, you could have plugged into eb832 and shut off the outlet based on ph spike or dip.

Heartbeat is a nice feature but I wish it would notify me within a couple of minutes instead of an hour. A lot can happen in an hour! very true, everything bad happens fast!

 

[BZOFIQ]

Heartbeat is a nice feature but I wish it would notify me within a couple of minutes instead of an hour. A lot can happen in an hour! very true, everything bad happens fast!

That's very true, a lot can happen. In that hour I could have already arranged for a friend to come over to take a peak.

 

[Biglew11]

Aware...but you missed the point.

Telling me that my controller failed is great, that controller not dying in the first place is MUCH MORE great.

true a controller shouldn't fail. but how many have actually had one fail on them? being aware of a failure in any part of your system is worth it.

 

[Reefs and Geeks]

I would also point out that investing a ton of money into a tank with a couple hundred bucks of coral and fish probably doesn't make sense. If you have tens of thousands in fish and coral (many do) than redundancy and monitoring starts to become a sound financial decision.

Clearly there is someone who is dead set against the Apex and is putting it down as a $20 powerstrip is all you "need". I'm sure it meets the needs of many, but not all. In the unfortianate even a heater is stuck on for any length of time and not mmonitored, he'd wish he had something to monitor the tank to let him know the tank was cooking. Then again, if the loss wouldn't be that significant, than it would be worth the risk.

 

[Biglew11]

i do have my controller and internet modem router plugged into a computer ups with power monitoring turned on.
if it switches to ups ill get a notification so the only time heart beat would warn me is if i lost internet at home.

 

[robbyg]

Unless you have the $20 one. Simplicity works sometimes

Simplicity is great but it has a number of limitations.

 

[lilgrounchuck]

My opinion is temperature monitoring/alerts and control. What’s yours?

All of those, but they can be had with multiple devices. The benefit I see in a controller is it puts all of those functions for your entire system in a one stop shop. No more looking at individual pieces of equipment to see what’s going on.

 

[robbyg]

I would also point out that investing a ton of money into a tank with a couple hundred bucks of coral and fish probably doesn't make sense. If you have tens of thousands in fish and coral (many do) than redundancy and monitoring starts to become a sound financial decision.

Clearly there is someone who is dead set against the Apex and is putting it down as a $20 powerstrip is all you "need". I'm sure it meets the needs of many, but not all. In the unfortianate even a heater is stuck on for any length of time and not mmonitored, he'd wish he had something to monitor the tank to let him know the tank was cooking. Then again, if the loss wouldn't be that significant, than it would be worth the risk.

I get what your saying, but as more time passes it's not just about the $$ value of what is in the tank.
It starts to become about that coral that you have had for 5 years and have grown from a tiny frag into something huge. Those named fish that will literally eat out of your hand and have grown from 1" long to 4 inches long.

 

[MabuyaQ]

Having a controller on your tank is like being hospitalized in hospital A with a serious hart condition and being put on a hartmonitor that sends an alert to the nursing station and all the docters and nurses individually if needed. Having no controller is like being hospitalized in hospital B with a serious hart condition and only having a nurse check up on you once or twice a day because its cheap. What hospital would you choose? Don't forget your dealing with life fully depending on your care for survival, so if you can financially afford it don't cheap out and get a controller. They all have cheaper options available, and most if not all are modular so you can build up over time.

 

[Webslinger]

Until the controller fails or software goes wacky!

Reef keeping is easy even without all the unneeded bells and whistles

 

[CavalierReef]

If you have any friends left, perhaps a simple alert would let you know to call them. "Hey, is my house under water"? "Is it on fire"? "Would you mind checking my reef"? etc YES, some form of "control" is a valuable asset and it can be expensive and it can be rather simple. You decide what you can and cannot do, what you want and do not want to do. Pretty simple.

 

[Webslinger]

If you have any friends left, perhaps a simple alert would let you know to call them. "Hey, is my house under water"? "Is it on fire"? "Would you mind checking my reef"? etc YES, some form of "control" is a valuable asset and it can be expensive and it can be rather simple. You decide what you can and cannot do, what you want and do not want to do. Pretty simple.

I wouldn't let a friend touch my reef.

 

[CavalierReef]

I yield to your trolldom.