Dosing Question w/ apex

I bought a marine color dosing pump. It has 1 plug and 3 different dosing pumps in the one unit. I want to plug this into my apex so that I can create a rule to tell it to turn off the dosing pump if the Ph gets too high. Is this possible, if so what plug on the energy bar should I plug it into?

Thanks!

 

I don't know the specifics of the Apex, but it is possible for sure. Just set an alarm for the PH being above the set point that you desire and have the turn off your dosers. Just be careful if the dosing pump has a built in timer/controller that the power loss doesnt reset everything to default values and screw up your tank.

 

Yeah I'm sure it can be done. I just want to know the specifics. I'm waiting for pink4miss to comment.. she knows her stuff with apex's. I know some of the plugs on the energy bar have relays and what not and others are constant. Just need the spcifics. This dosing pump has a built in battery backup to hold the time.

 

I know that you can't do that with many all in one dosers because they don't save the date/time and have to be reprogrammed everytime the power cuts off. If your's saves the info then it's easy. Pick a port and program is like this

Fallback ON
Set ON
If pH > 8.50 Then OFF

 

It's not going to work like that with that doser, I have the same doser and because of the way it's programming is once power is lost it wants to restart if on manual mode and on auto mode you will miss a dose if it gets shut off and it will mess the dosing cycle up in the tank.

The best thing to do is figure out hom much of each your tank needs and dial that into 4 doses. The unit in auto mode will do the math for you (ie) if you need 20ml of alk
Your unit will dose 5ml 4 times a day and won't see ph jump from that.

I'm at 28mls alk at 4 times day and I do not see any ph jump.

Hope that helps

 

So if I had it setup to shut off if ph got too high and then come back on when ph came down the pump wouldnt turn back on right your saying? If the ph gets too high and you have your apex set to turn off wouldnt you want your dosing pump to miss a dose?

 

your setting this program up as a safety so missing one dose would not be a big deal i don't think.
im not familiar with the brand dosing pump you have or how it works. but just set the apex to kick out if ph reaches an unsafe ph number. i used to have my ato with kalk in it set to cut power to the ato at 8.45 i like to keep my ph is 8.0 to 8.3

i now don't use kalk. i have found another product that has been keeping my ph stable

 

should i use a relay plug or constant one?

 

since the dosing pumps are so low volts i would use one of the mechanical relays for it.. 4th or 8th

From the Apex New User Guide about the outlets on the EnergyBar8:

"Outlets 4 and 8 are activated with mechanical relays. These have a distinct "click" whenever they switch on/off. ... But, they are known to "arc" and have their contacts "pit". And, as far as switches go, they‟re relatively slow which is a problem in some applications."

"Outlets 1-3 and 5-7 are TRIAC (Triode for Alternating Current) solid state outlets. They are very, very fast and can switch in fractions of a second and do that all day long without wearing out like a mechanical switch/relay would. Another advantage that TRIAC switches have over mechanical switches is that they are very good at switching high current, inductive (lighting) loads because they “time” their switch to the point when the current sine wave is at or near zero (what Neptune calls "soft start"). This virtually eliminates the possibility of “arcing” that can happen with mechanical relays that are indiscriminate about where in the sine wave they open/close."

"One problem with TRIAC controlled outlets however is that they sometimes cannot detect very low power factor devices and as a result may not switch off correctly. They fail in an „open‟ state. This only happens with very low power devices (i.e. < 4-5 watts). However, if you have any device like that, you might consider putting them on outlets 4 or 8. Dosing pumps are a good example of problematic devices with TRIAC outlets."

 

Thank you