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melev

When you have to travel, a tank sitter is usually best

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Recently I've read a few threads where people's tanks were dead when they arrived home after being away. I always make some type of arrangements to have someone stop by daily just to do a quick visual inspection and throw in some thawed food. Usually this works out quite well, but over this past weekend, it was somewhat of a cluster.

Mere days before I had to leave, mine cancelled on me because he and his family were heading out of town as well. My home is automated so I texted another person, created a special code for him to enter and access the alarm system and hoped it would all work out as planned. He'd helped before, so he knew my system. The SmartATO was the newest gizmo, and I wanted him to know how to reset it, so I texted him with a picture.

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Since I'd treated for cyano recently, I knew the skimmer would be a little finicky while I was away. But I have a waste collector with a float switch to handle any excessive output, minimizing the need for cleanup. Once full, it shuts down the skimmer.

I left for MACNA, and forgot to set my home's alarm. I'd planned to set it remotely when I was in Denver, until I shattered my iPhone as I got out of the car at the hotel. A trip to the Apple Store got the phone in cue to be repaired, and the alarm was the last thing on my mind. Five hours later, I got my phone back with a nice new piece of glass, and went on with my day. The tank sitter never had to deal with the alarm panel, even though I'd texted him that necessary info originally. Around 9:30 that night, my skimmer's waste collector filled up and I began to get two texts and two emails every hour all night long. At the Apex session Friday morning, I asked how I could stop the barrage of notifications and one person suggested I turn off that float switch. Turns out that was the wrong answer.

Murphy was happy to play along, as everything fell into place so nicely. The tank sitter showed up, emptied the waste collector and told me via text the floor was wet but flowing to the french drain. Not a big deal. RussM showed me what to change in my email notifications to reset the float switch message (line 10), but I never did turn the float switch back on...

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Saturday I noticed the house alarm wasn't set, and I knew the sitter wasn't there so I armed it. On Sunday, I got notified by the sitter that he set off the alarm, and left. The alarm company contacted me via email and text, and I called to let them know what had happened, but the police had already arrived to clear the scene. I let the sitter know all was well, what to do, and he told me he'd head back over and deal with the waste collector flood situation. I was thinking "what flood..." - sigh.

The only silver lining in this whole ordeal was that the SmartATO device was in error mode and refused to top off. I was actually talking with the guys at Coralvue about this exact issue because it was a nuisance to me. Since the waste collector wasn't shutting off the skimmer, water was exiting to the french drain and the return zone was dropping accordingly. No top off was being added, so salinity stayed perfect. I told you: silver lining.

When I got home at 2 a.m. Monday morning, I heard all kinds of odd sounds of pumps surging, and drains burping. The room was pitch dark, the floor wet, the waste collector filled to the brim, the sump low, the calcium reactor NOT trickling, and the SmartATO beeping away. Good times. I'd arrived with two new dwarf eels and two corals that I had to deal with still, but I had to resolve the other situation first.

On top of that, I'm continually aware of my new carpet and don't want to track stuff on to it, so here I am slipping shoes on and off as I trudge back and forth to dump stuff out, bring stuff back, wipe things down, dial this in, open the valve to slowly refill the sump with more saltwater, close that valve, check on the tanks to see if the lowered water affected them adversely, remove the overflowing sock I'd installed and place the drain lines back into the bubble tower, while dipping new corals and trying to acclimate two new eels that are ready to leap out of their bags.

I was in bed by 6 a.m.

Next blog will be a nicer one, I promise.

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Comments

  1. Laser's Avatar
    Seems you are getting know Mr. Murphy as well as I have gotten to know him over the years.

    At least you are back on the right track.
  2. melev's Avatar
    We'll see if he's ready to move on to someone else for a bit.
  3. Vanmo92's Avatar
    Im curious as to your opinion of the SmartATO device is, sounds like it has some flaws. I saw it at MACNA and it definitely peaked my interest. Maybe a topic for a blog post a few months down the road
  4. BulkHead's Avatar
    I have met Mr. Murphy myself. He enjoys coming to visit while you are out of town and particularly loves water disasters. It's a blessing your issues weren't any worse... I'm on the fence when it comes to a SmartATO. I've had good luck with the mechanical setup, but that too can fail. I suppose everything is a compromise to some extent. Have you thought about a webcam or a simple Raspberry Pi camera setup that can take pictures of your fish room and email them too you? $100 piece of mind...
  5. melev's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Vanmo92
    Im curious as to your opinion of the SmartATO device is, sounds like it has some flaws. I saw it at MACNA and it definitely peaked my interest. Maybe a topic for a blog post a few months down the road
    I LOVE IT! But... I'm running into some minor issues that I'd like to resolve before I post the full product review. Out of the box, it's awesome. Everything is included, and you don't need a trip to Home Depot to get it going. My mini-test went flawlessly, but real time application has been good part of the time, then annoying at other times. I'd like to give it a good review, so that is why I talked with the guys at Coralvue to see what they thought. They told me that they thought I may need a replacement pump - maybe that is all it was.

    What was happening: As my 45 top off container's water level dropped from multiple top offs, it takes longer to move the water into the sump per session. I refill it once a week. The internal brain measures the duration per top off, and if it needs to run too long, it stops and beeps - FOREVER. I tried to outlast it, but it drove me insane. I wanted to know if it would ever reset, but it does not. You have to unplug it and plug it back in. I wondered if my return zone was too large or the head pressure was a factor, but they said it is designed to push up to 6.5' (right into the display tank), and surmise that my pump may have an issue. I don't know yet. But in this particular case, that 'flaw' benefited the reef because it didn't attempted to replace the water being lost by the skimmer during my time away.

    I'm certain on a smaller system, it would run perfectly. Mine is 450g combined, and the additional complications may skew the outcome. I'll update when I have more information.
  6. melev's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by BulkHead
    I have met Mr. Murphy myself. He enjoys coming to visit while you are out of town and particularly loves water disasters. It's a blessing your issues weren't any worse... I'm on the fence when it comes to a SmartATO. I've had good luck with the mechanical setup, but that too can fail. I suppose everything is a compromise to some extent. Have you thought about a webcam or a simple Raspberry Pi camera setup that can take pictures of your fish room and email them too you? $100 piece of mind...
    I'm using AT&T Digital Life and was checking on the tank and sump area from two different angles several times while I was gone. I could see the waste collector was full, and knew the sitter would dump it out. I just didn't realize turning off that float switch would be such a mess. I guess having it continue to bug me would have been the better choice, but I was getting all kinds of texts from people during MACNA and didn't need that additional white noise.

    RussM pointed out that if I didn't clear this particular alarm notification, then any other alarm would never get through. That is why he told me to program for that one switch in the email-alarm, so it would clear and be able to send me a different one if one occurred. There always seems to be one more line of code you should have added.