salinity/conductivity probe

[Dave & Monica]

John, I've starting working with Paul at Neptune - still troubleshooting but the probe is supect at this point. I don't want to mess with the firmware since next week I'm leaving the country for 3 weeks and don't want to introduce new problems when I need the Apex the most.

bazineta - I did move my base unit temp probe to the PM2. Same issue.

 

[Whitelight]

Septic, how did you detect the stray voltage and isolate it to the skimmer pump? I'm new and I've heard of checking for stray voltage, but no idea how to check/measure it. Thanks.

 

[septicdeath]

I wired up the voltage meter to test and continue to test (one probe into ground of isolated outlet, other into tank water, rubber shoes on just in case :} ). I shut down all devices, powered them on one at a time, looking for the first instance of voltage, then turned that device off, and turned on all others one at a time, seeing no voltage except when cad lights skimmer was on. I also left it on and turned everything else on to see if original voltage rose to see if more than one voltag reading, which didn't happen...

Hope that helps..

 

[Dave & Monica]

So here's an update. Paul at Neptune asked me to visually inspect the probe to see if the glass ball was cracked, it wasn't from what I could see. He asked me to put the probe outside the tank inside a glass of RO/DI water for a day and send him the graph. It read 0 the whole time. He asked me to fill the glass with salt water and do the same thing. I did and here is the graph. Even with the probe outside the tank, it varries during the day. At this point Paul will let me know what he wants me to do on Monday. I'm still not clear if the issue is with the PM2 or the probe.

 

[BigOldReef]

Dave & Mon,
I have been having similar issues as you. Even leaving the probe in the calibration fluid for 24 hours it swings all over the place. I bought my Apex, pM2 and probe in February from Marine Depot. I have been working with Paul and Curt since 3 days after my purchase. My PM2 and probe are back at Neptune for the second time since I purchased it.

Its very frustrating. But you are not the only one with these issues.

Dave in CA

 

[septicdeath]

Well, keep me posted. I know that we are not alone, however, like I said in my other post, those that have had their Apex's a little longer, seem to make sure to post that they dont have any issues, it seems that those of us with units purchased in 2012, seem to be the ones with issues? Coincidence? No idea? But I think their are 5 of us across the multiple forums that are posting these swings, and just about all of our threads have a "mines been running great for the last year, or the last 6 months" posted in each of them.

Thanks BigOldReef and Dave&Monica, even though I thought my issue was resolved, I believe that Im starting to see the swings again, however, its nothing near as wide as the ones you have posted, mine is swinging only slightly. I feel its not fair until I get a two week sample again.

-John

 

[Dave & Monica]

So while waiting for Paul to get back with me I was looking at two days worth of data, and noticed that when either my T5's or metal halides would turn on, I'd have that swing. So I took the chart and sent it to Paul and he said that there is EMI and try to move it away from the lights. The PM2 module was 18" from the T5, and about 36" from the hqi ballests. There was no way to move it farther away, plus the probe would have to pass close to the lights to get the probe into the tank - so I moved the Pm2 downstairs, moved the temp probe back to the base;took the temp probe from the PM3 to the PM2, and finally had to redo all the programming to ensure the right probe was being called on and not renamed. I decided to recalibrate the probe using my tank water since i know it's perfectly at 35ppt now. So I moved it from the glass of salt water to the sump, and recalibrated. So far althouht it reads a bit low, it seems to be stable. I'll follow up here and let everyone know how this testing progresses. Does any one know if the probe was reading 34.4, and should read 35, would the temp offset go down or up to allign that?

 

[Dave & Monica]

So here is the graph where the T5's or MH's cause the swings. Talking to Paul, he's seen this in the lab, but sometimes EMI impacts the salinity, sometimes it doesn't - and there is no specific make or model that consistentely does it. So the EMI is causing feedback through the aquabus line. Paul recommended to purchased a seperator control module (and I did from him) and with shipping it was $52. I also swapped the HQI's from a relay outlets at the end, to outlets that were the triac. No change. Now that I think about it, I don't know if this is going to be enough watt/amp for both 250W and the Icecap on the 2 outlet seperator. I'm not overly confident this will fix the problem, and starting to feel the salinity probe isn't as well tested or proven as it should. Let's see. ((The below graph is when it was in the glass of water - not in the tank))

 

[septicdeath]

hmmm. Im running radion's and my ballast is as far as it could possibly be from any of my apex, and I dont use the apex to control it, power it, or any of that. (I would love to control it from my apex, but neptune says ecotech hasn't given them the code yet, funny that the Reef Angel open source controller is able to control it by 1 smart guy just reverse engineering it though).

Thanks for keeping US up to date, really hope you get it fixed. I agree on the r&d of the probe.....

 

[Dave & Monica]

So moving the probe to my sump resulted in the 150 hqi to cause the swings, in addition to each of the 250 hqi's upstairs. The change is now theT5s don't cause movement but the other hqi is. The upstairs are new (Nov 2011) Lumatek adjustable ballast and the down stairs is a lBJ German ballast. I not only checked the outlet to ensure a proper ground, also tested ground when the units were running, and lastly ran a new ground just to make sure for the ballasts and light fixtures. Unfortunatly, nothing changed. in the end I packaged it up and Neptune is going to issue a refund through where I bought it. I gave this an honest effort and really wanted to trigger salt or ro/di top off based on an accurate reading.

 

[septicdeath]

too bad, does the competitor salinity / conductivity system suffer from the same un disclosed issues? (well, disclosed now, but Im sure still not in the offered pre-sales literature).
Although a second whole controller for just salinity seems like over kill.

They say the emi is effecting the aquabus, I wonder if higher quality usb cables would shield it? The aquabus usb cables are not the cheapest I have seen, but they are still chinese quality. In the production studios (I work at CBS interactive), all cables (including rca, and usb) are three times as thick, wonder if that could have helped, maybe neptune will continue to try to fix this and attempt to use higher quality usb cables.

Good luck... thanks for your input.