Help me Find a Controller

[Rayne]

Hey everyone,

I'm in the concept design phase of a 300G tank and I'm trying to find out some more information about aquarium controllers. I am looking to control and monitor the following aspects of my tank.

• Lighting - I want to go with LED lighting and to be able to control the lights on/off cycle, to be able to dim the lights to simulate sunrise/sunset & possibly have the controller lengthen the lights for summer days and shorten them for winter.
• Monitoring - I want to be able to hook up a temperature probe & have it control a heater. Maybe I'll add pH probe as well.
• Feed button - I want to have a button on the controller that I can push that will shut down the return & circulation pumps for a few minutes during feeding time.
• Remote Monitoring - I'd also like to be able to access the monitoring data remotely.

I've looked into the Nepute Systems AquaController Apex and it looks like it can do everything I want. The problem is that the only LED lighting systems it supports are the AI reef units. They are way too expensive and I am not going to be growing corals so they are not an option.

I'm kinda stumped now and where to look. Anyone have any advice?

 

[aaronb]

I'd say use the Neptune Aquacontroller. I'm not sure how many LED light fixtures are dimmable. They have to have a dimmable driver to achieve that. If you know of a light fixture that is dimmable I'd guess it'd work with the Neptune. My best suggestion would be to call or email them would work with their system.

 

[T3hFu><0R]

I have a Johnson Controls A419 I bought off of ebay for 45$ it's used in commercial applications for refrigerators, freezers, and warmers. I have one on my keggerator to keep my beer at a precise temerature as well. Hook it up to a titanium heating rod and your water will never deviate by more than +/- 1 degree. I have been incredibly impressed by their effectiveness, preciseness and unending reliability.

For the feeding "button" I use a light switch panel with labels to control everything. I bought some extention cords, a single large power strip, and a large panel light switch and wired it all up so I can control my eheim, 950gph pump, UV filter and pump, heater, marineland filters and lights seperately. sometimes you want to just unpower something temporarily. spending 40$ to make everything flip a switch easy is really nice. it seems like a lot of money for about 3 days. then you quit feeling bad about it.

This is from a guy with a 75 gallon tank that has a 55 gallon sump, eheim 160G, magnum 350 water polisher, and 2x marineland emperor 400's to support.... 20 small cichlids and a gold nugget pleco and zebra. I also order eheim media 10L at a time. Spend 800$ once, spend 23$ a month.

Water is H20. why should it have anything you don't want in it? Good water is invisible water. Fish are supposed to fly.

 

[Dan F]

That would be nice to have all that in one controller. I use a Pinpoint temperature controller, a Tsunami wavemaker/feeding timer, and a simple digital timer (no dimmer) for my lights. I might have to look into the Neptune controllers one of these days.