Recent Blogs Posts

Power failure:
When the power goes out and I'm out of town, I get an email & a text to let me know. What I don't get is a follow up to let me know power has been restored. If the power goes out at 2 a.m. I have to ask myself if I should call my tank sitter to head over to my place to care for the situation.... or should I hope it all took care of itself? I've got some code in my system but it doesn't do what I'd hoped. Terence gave me a suggestion using a low voltage wallwort plug and a ...

For months, hobbyists have clamoured for Fusion. We learned about it in 2013, and by MACNA it was showcased to excited attendees. I attended the special Apex class Friday morning with about 75 others, and we loved what we were hearing. No more fighting network protocols, no port forwarding, no DYNDNS redirects, no email address workarounds. Fusion solved all that, and we just had to wait until November for the release.

It took longer naturally. December rolled around and a handful ...

About a year ago, Apex released their beta Dashboard firmware. A friend of mine installed it instantly and raved about it, but I held off. Beta means it was still in the testing phase, and I didn't know what may or may not happen with it installed. My tank already has a number of areas where things could potentially go wrong (power outage, tornado, house falling in) so why add computer error to the mix?

First of all, here's the old look I've been looking at for two years. ...

Last weekend, I attended San Diego's Comic Con (Thursday to Sunday). I had a great time, and during my time away, a friend watched the reef to make sure all was well. There was a power outage on Friday night, and the Apex notified me via text and email, but never informed me if power was restored. I didn't really feel comfortable contacting my friend at 2 a.m. his time, so I wrote him the next morning to let him know and have him give me an update. He stopped by and reported all was fine. Whew. ...

This entry will discuss equipment that I pan on using for my 300g build.

Automation will be handled by the APEX controller that I already have. I will be adding an EB8 and possibly a 2^nd ph probe to handle the Calc reactor.



The return pump is Reeflo Dart that has been collecting dust in the garage.



SMR1 Bio-pellet Reactor, I already have this running on the current setup. ...