Reef Tank Monitoring and Safety Probes

[Boga]

Please add comments if you like or dislike any of the probes. Little bit of your experience will help the others to get better.
Thanks for voting and comments. 

 

[Boga]

For now I have the temperature and grounding probes. Plan for pH, EC and leak detection in the next few months.

Personally I would like to learn more about the ORP and Dissolved Oxygen. If they are really useful and worth the money. Pros and Cons?

 

[Reef Hero]

I have the orp probe but I don't really think it is necessary..... Same with the dissolved oxygen problem. Won't a ph probe react to dissolved oxygen as well?


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[TORX]

Just ph and Temp so far on my Apex. I plan on adding leak detection and Apex also has a salinity probe that they just released that I would like to add. I do not know anything about orp yet, still reading up on everything as I come across it now that I have an Apex.

 

[KBennett]

I'm still on the fence about the grounding probe.  I'd rather not have ground anywhere near the tank.  I'd also be scared of tripping the gfci.

 

[dale]

i only have a cheap temp alarm, its never needed to go off so i dunno if it works..

 

[Duke]

just temp here.. i have never once in the history of my tank checked the PH so i figure whats the point to know what it is anyways.. lol

 

[Reef Hero]

just temp here.. i have never once in the history of my tank checked the PH so i figure whats the point to know what it is anyways.. lol

I agree.... However, the ph probe can help in the event of certain failures and when connect to alarm at certain values it could notify you of excessive additive dosage and drop in dissolved oxygen/excessive co2 in water. Same thing could be said for the conductivity probe.....it could notify you if you had a leak in your tank somewhere if you are topping up using ato because your salinity would drop..... Just my opinions....I use temp, conductivity, orp, and ph probes.


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[Reef Hero]

[quote author=Duke link=topic=7487.msg77225#msg77225 date=1390005439]
just temp here.. i have never once in the history of my tank checked the PH so i figure whats the point to know what it is anyways.. lol

I agree.... However, the ph probe can help in the event of certain failures and when connect to alarm at certain values it could notify you of excessive additive dosage and drop in dissolved oxygen/excessive co2 in water. Same thing could be said for the conductivity probe.....it could notify you if you had a leak in your tank somewhere if you are topping up using ato because your salinity would drop..... Just my opinions....I use temp, conductivity, orp, and ph probes.

I want to add that even if these real time probes are not used to alarm, they can still help the reefer understand what is happening in their tank chemistry wise that is.....
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[/quote]


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[Boga]

.............  Won't a ph probe react to dissolved oxygen as well?

I think that you are right. pH would most likely react at oxygen variations and somehow they will be in sync. There might be a few possible exceptions from this, and here I am going to exaggerate a lot:
[list type=decimal]
[*]The water has a high level of oxygen (super skimmer sucking air via a CO[sub]2[/sub] scrubber, plenty of macroalgae in refugium, etc). There is a substantial addition of acid in the system (maybe a wrong dosing of vinegar). Result: pH will drop, but oxygen will stay at high level.
[*]Low level of oxygen (bad skimmer, with a tank in a basement, lots of CO[sub]2[/sub] surrounding, no macroalgae). Overdosing of pH raiser. Result: pH will rise, but oxygen will stay low.
[/list]

just temp here.. i have never once in the history of my tank checked the PH so i figure whats the point to know what it is anyways.. lol

So hard to make a comment here with a great tank like yours ... LOL  ..... I see the pH probe as a sanity check of the system. If it goes out of its normal variations then something may be wrong.

 

[Duke]

[quote author=Reef Hero link=topic=7487.msg77197#msg77197 date=1389992653]
.............  Won't a ph probe react to dissolved oxygen as well?

I think that you are right. pH would most likely react at oxygen variations and somehow they will be in sync. There might be a few possible exceptions from this, and here I am going to exaggerate a lot:
[list type=decimal]
[*]The water has a high level of oxygen (super skimmer sucking air via a CO[sub]2[/sub] scrubber, plenty of macroalgae in refugium, etc). There is a substantial addition of acid in the system (maybe a wrong dosing of vinegar). Result: pH will drop, but oxygen will stay at high level.
[*]Low level of oxygen (bad skimmer, with a tank in a basement, lots of CO[sub]2[/sub] surrounding, no macroalgae). Overdosing of pH raiser. Result: pH will rise, but oxygen will stay low.
[/list]

just temp here.. i have never once in the history of my tank checked the PH so i figure whats the point to know what it is anyways.. lol

So hard to make a comment here with a great tank like yours ... LOL  ..... I see the pH probe as a sanity check of the system. If it goes out of its normal variations then something may be wrong.
[/quote]

i was actually under the assumption that Ph raises with ORP and lowers as it drops..  could be wrong tho. and your totally right about the other probes being a good indicator of something going wrong, i've just always viewed them as one of those things i kinda want but its not a necessity

 

[Victoss]

I'm still on the fence about the grounding probe.  I'd rather not have ground anywhere near the tank.  I'd also be scared of tripping the gfci.

But if the gfci is tripping then something is wrong (unless you have a sensitive gfci which is not out of the norm).GFCI's do nothing unless you have ground somewhere. Think of it this way, powerhead has a Neutral wire exposed in tank water and this could be like this for a long time without your knowledge, nothing much happens when you stick you hand in the tank until you hit your fixture which has a short to the hot wire. The gfci won't go off meaning you take the full shock until your breaker gets hot enough to pop. Now if you had a grounding probe the gfci would of tripped and you would of felt almost nothing.

On a side note never use a grounding probe without a gfci, water is grounded and you touch your hot fixture again same thing, full shock until the breaker goes off after you've taken the fatal shock.

The opposite situation can occur too, where you have hot in the water and you will not notice it until you come in contact with a ground or neutral, if you had gfci and probe then it would of tripped immediately when the hot got exposed.

Sorry to get off topic a little, as for me I had a diy temp probe to my controller which got a leak in it and will have gfci and ground probe on new tank in sump, the display has no wires in it. I bought a cheap digital temp probe for the new tank but it seems off by a bit compared to the thermometer.  Salinity would be pretty neat but I think I need a real controller for that and not my diy.

 

[KBennett]

If current goes from the hot to the neutral, you won't trip the GFCI, unless you are touching a neutral from the other side of the GFCI, which isn't very likely.

If you don't have a ground, and a hot is exposed, there really isn't much of an issue.  I might feel a static shock, but there is nowhere for the current to go. Really, I should have a probe in the water to test AC voltage just in case.

I have two circuits and two GFCIs supplying my tank.  Both GFCIs will trip if current goes from one circuit to the other. 

If for some odd reason I do come into contact with ground the GFCI will trip, but I don't see that as very likely.

 

[Victoss]

If you don't have a ground, and a hot is exposed, there really isn't much of an issue.  I might feel a static shock, but there is nowhere for the current to go. Really, I should have a probe in the water to test AC voltage just in case.

I have two circuits and two GFCIs supplying my tank.  Both GFCIs will trip if current goes from one circuit to the other. 

I was merely suggesting a what if situation where you have hot water and touch a neutral somewhere.

Didn't think about the 2 gfci's at the time but you'd be right, they would both trip if they shared current some way. Again it would require 2 faults to occur for the current to go from one to the other but I think it's these kind of situations that we need to think of when protecting ourselves.

 

[Boga]

A grounding probe helps minimize the stray currents, too.

After I moved to the ne house, I forgot to put the grounding probe in the tank. One day during feeding I felt a strange thing on my fingers. I put the probe in and the GFCI tripped right away. I think I measured about 15V between the water and the house ground. I know 15v don't kill, but don't like these experiments either. At that time I was bare foot in a non finished basement.
I found that one of my power heads was leaking current.

Now I have three probes in various tanks


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[KBennett]

If you are on a cement floor,that probably has had salt water dripped on it, that's a different story.

 

[Petercar (RIP Dec 2017)]

i was told  not to use ground probes..cuz yu won't know theres stray current