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Old 05-11-2019, 02:24 AM
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Frogger Frogger is offline
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Default Reef Tank Automation can really suck

Can some one please tell me why automation of our reef tanks is a good thing?

2 days ago the power went out for half and hour, I have battery backups on the return pump so everything is good there, water kept flowing. Power comes back on and first thing I notice is the lighting (ATI Hybrid) has reset its clock to midnight so the lights aren’t working. I have to hook the unit up to the laptop to reset the timer, bit of a pain in the butt but not the end of the world.

Last night I started to notice that a couple of my corals were not looking so hot (canary in the coal mine). I tested the alkalinity of my tank and my alkalinity was over 11dkh. I normally run my tank at 8.5 to 8.8dkh. I immediately decided to check my alkalinity and calcium reservoirs to see that they are both empty. Now I had about a weeks worth of supplements in each reservoir before the failure.

When I purchased the Kamoer X4 several months ago I purposely purchased what I felt was the best unit available to minimize the chance of this happening. Kamoer has been making peristatic pumps for the medical field for years. I figured their unit should be the most reliable unit on the market. I purposely steered away from lower end units for this exact reason.

Last night after I noticed the reservoirs were empty I tried to log into my Kamoer unit with my phone and it keeps telling me its off-line. I unplugged the unit and it still is off-line. I unplugged the unit and will have to see if I can fix it so that the pumps don’t run dry.

I have always been worried about automated devices failing. There are horror stories of auto top off’s failing frying a tank etc. I only keep a little over a days worth of water in my auto top off reservoir to avoid the risk of the unit adding too much fresh water. I try to protect my investment as much as possible.

I was just starting to get comfortable with the Kamoer doser managing my alkalinity and calcium additions. Looks like if I want to start using the doser again I will have to hook it up to a battery backup so to protect me from a power failure in the future.

Not sure what the impact to me tank is going to be, several of the corals are not looking great. Only time will tell. Kind of sucks because I was just getting over the black bug infestation and things were looking good.
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Old 05-11-2019, 04:37 AM
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Dash Dash is offline
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Default

Sorry to hear...agh very aggravating. I don’t have automated anything (except lights) for various reasons, mostly budget & lack of know how. One day...
In the meantime I like pottering around filling things and pouring things in.

Hope your coral rebounds. Would you do water changes to correct or let levels come back gradually?
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