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Best user-friendly but cost-effective reef controller system?


biochemrobyn

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So I have been thinking highly about what I can do to keep my love of reefing alive but not need to spend too much time tweaking the tank. Also, sleep is quite a treasure for me, so I will do just about anything to avoid a sleepless night worrying about my tank.

 

Does anyone have preferences on the most user-friendly but yet cost effective all-inclusive reef control system? If so, why?

 

Thinking highly so far on splurging on the apex classic, but the apex junior seems decent.....

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Apex junior is really all you need - depending on what you are going to want to do in the future.

 

If you just want some controls and temp monitoring, then it's great. If you think you'll want to add PH or more plugs then you need to start factoring that into your overall cost. The only downside to the junior used to be that they limited the number of additional modules you could add...so eventually you would reach a limit. But now you can expand all you want...it's just more expensive to do it piece by piece instead of all at once.

 

Here's the thing - you can get a lot of control with just temp, PM1 and wxm (depending on your lights). You don't need the ORP or the salinity - which is a POS anyway.

 

Get the APEX junior and go from there. That's what I did...although I eventually bought a full version, but only because I reached the maximum modules limit - which isn't an issue anymore.

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Having used a reef keeper elite for a few years, and having a failure, I'm a big believer now in keeping it simple. The problem with a controller is that it's all on one device. My lights have their own control, my ca reactor has ph controller, heater has temp controller, and everything else is simply plugged in. That way any one failure doesn't shut down my whole system.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Having used a reef keeper elite for a few years, and having a failure, I'm a big believer now in keeping it simple. The problem with a controller is that it's all on one device. My lights have their own control, my ca reactor has ph controller, heater has temp controller, and everything else is simply plugged in. That way any one failure doesn't shut down my whole system.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I agree with you Bill. I intend to use mine for remote monitoring, but I am reticent to actually use it for controlling.

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