The Thing About Set It and Forget It.

[this is me]

You do really forget it.
After setting up my CA-RX and everything running stable for a couple weeks, I decided to stop testing. Well, I just noticed the CO2 tank is empty and tested my ALK and it's 5dKH. This is with weekly water change. I honestly don't know when the tank went empty.

 

[SteelerMike]

Recently had the exact same thing happen to me. My DKH was 4.3!! :: I will definitely be testing more regularly now...

 

[s_kelley]

Same here, a few weeks back had to replace my co2 doser cause it wasn't functioning properly and dumped the whole new tank overnight

 

[reefstarter]

I check mine every day , but I am sure I will forget at some point

 

[freakit]

I had the myaquariumplants doser dump my tank overnight before as well.

Replacing the plastic ring(seal) between the doser and the co2 tank fixed the problem.


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[Joe Rice]

I wish mindStream would just come out with an alkalinity monitor. They seem to have the technology but they've set their goal so high I worry that they'll disappear without their product every seeing the light of day.

 

[IPWitan]

that company appears to exist in Vermont. Someone on this forum must know something about this! i have been quite curious why this doesn't already exist.

 

[Marshall O]

There is a hobbyist that made an alkalinity monitor. He's using an Apex for it, though says it should work with any the major controllers. I'm very excited to see this available for the public!

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[freakit]

There is a hobbyist that made an alkalinity monitor. He's using an Apex for it, though says it should work with any the major controllers. I'm very excited to see this available for the public!

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I would love to read about that.

 

[Marshall O]

He's posted on FB, I'll have to see if there is anything on any other forums. I don't want to link to his FB page as I would not want someone doing that to me I would think.

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[Marshall O]

Here is one of the posts:

"Following up on last night's post, today I am, for the first time, using my Neptune Apex to control my alkalinity dosing based on the output of the ALKALINITY MONITOR!!!

For those of you who saw last night's post, this is today's graph. The red line is when I turned the dosing back on last night (same as the red line in last night's image). I let the dosing run until my tank had recovered to an alkalinity of 8.1 dKH. At that point, I reprogrammed the Apex to only dose if the alkalinity was less than 8.00, otherwise dosing remains off (green line is when this program started).

As you can see, the alkalinity dropped until it hit 8.00, and since then it has been within 0.03 dKH of the 8.00 target.

Here is the Apex program for the Outlet that controls the alkalinity dosing pump:

Fallback OFF
OSC 000:00/000:44/006:10 Then ON
If Alk > 08.00 Then OFF
If Alk < 07.10 Then OFF

The reason for the "If Alk < 07.10 Then OFF" line is that if my device were to ever lose power for whatever reason, the output would drop to 7.0 (same voltage as a pH probe at pH 7.0 = 0.0 volts). In that case, I don't know what the alkalinity really is, so stop dosing, and configure an alarm to go off elsewhere in the Apex programming.

Clearly, this could be adapted to other controllers as well; my device is not Apex-specific."

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[Archit]

Here is one of the posts:

"Following up on last night's post, today I am, for the first time, using my Neptune Apex to control my alkalinity dosing based on the output of the ALKALINITY MONITOR!!!

For those of you who saw last night's post, this is today's graph. The red line is when I turned the dosing back on last night (same as the red line in last night's image). I let the dosing run until my tank had recovered to an alkalinity of 8.1 dKH. At that point, I reprogrammed the Apex to only dose if the alkalinity was less than 8.00, otherwise dosing remains off (green line is when this program started).

As you can see, the alkalinity dropped until it hit 8.00, and since then it has been within 0.03 dKH of the 8.00 target.

Here is the Apex program for the Outlet that controls the alkalinity dosing pump:

Fallback OFF
OSC 000:00/000:44/006:10 Then ON
If Alk > 08.00 Then OFF
If Alk < 07.10 Then OFF

The reason for the "If Alk < 07.10 Then OFF" line is that if my device were to ever lose power for whatever reason, the output would drop to 7.0 (same voltage as a pH probe at pH 7.0 = 0.0 volts). In that case, I don't know what the alkalinity really is, so stop dosing, and configure an alarm to go off elsewhere in the Apex programming.

Clearly, this could be adapted to other controllers as well; my device is not Apex-specific."

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I remember reading his posts a while back too -- some person in China I think, right? the one that I remember reading from had a full doser setup hooked up. if it's the same person and he figured out how to use it with Apex, that'd be AWESOME!

at the time I believe he was looking into productizing this ... hopefully that happens soon

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[Steviereefs]

You do really forget it.
After setting up my CA-RX and everything running stable for a couple weeks, I decided to stop testing. Well, I just noticed the CO2 tank is empty and tested my ALK and it's 5dKH. This is with weekly water change. I honestly don't know when the tank went empty.

If you really think about it though regardless of the testing, these instances practically happened over night I would assume. So in the end was like most accidents, was it really something that could have been prevented . I think this is the matter of technology that still needs improvement to prevent component failure because this is a common occurrence.

Recently had the exact same thing happen to me. My DKH was 4.3!! :: I will definitely be testing more regularly now...

Same here, a few weeks back had to replace my co2 doser cause it wasn't functioning properly and dumped the whole new tank overnight

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[Marshall O]

I remember reading his posts a while back too -- some person in China I think, right? the one that I remember reading from had a full doser setup hooked up. if it's the same person and he figured out how to use it with Apex, that'd be AWESOME!

at the time I believe he was looking into productizing this ... hopefully that happens soon

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Not in China, here in America actually!

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[choff]

I recently stopped using my CaRx for similar reasons. My tank ran out for the first time and I had no idea. I refilled it and set up an apex alert to notify me if the CaRx pH ever got above 7.5. A week later, I get the alert and my tank is empty. I must have had a leak. Tried again with a fresh gasket and more rigorous soap testing for a leak. Same result. Dumped my aquarium plants reg and built a high end custom one. Still friggin leaking and cannot find the source. I am going to go keep working on it, but in the meantime I am going to back to 2 part to get stable. My parameters have been all over the place the last month and Im not happy about it.

An Alk monitor would be a godsend! At the 2013 MACNA there was a guy there pimping these pens that got me all jazzed up. The calcium one in particular. He said they would work in salt water, but that turned out to be false.