*sigh* I got taught another lesson in "Ways your tank can crash that you'd never thought of."
I already watched nearly all my montiporas kick off due to previously-mentioned problems, and then my acro frags started looking bad; one even RTN'd. To cut a long story of going-nuts-and-finding nothing-wrong short, I figured out -- by observing my weekly temp graphs through my Apex controller -- that my newly installed fuge light was electromagnetically noisy and was inducing a spurious current in my temperature probe. Every night when the light would come on, the temperature that my controller read would spike up or down four or more degrees, which of course messed with my heating regime, so my tank was experiencing temperature swings every 12 hours, and was getting down as low, at points, as 74*F, and going up to about 82. (Normally, I keep my tank at 80.)
Fortunately, once I figured out what the hell was going on, the fix was easy: wrapping a thin strip of tinfoil around the foot or so of probe cable that was inside of my stand, and which ran near the various cables running from my sump light's ballast to the bulbs.
So, a word to the wise: be aware that your probe wires can pick up interference from things like lights, even if there's no actual current leak in the tank water. This is relatively easily diagnosed when you're looking for it: when the appliance causing interference turns on, the probe readings will rapidly change, and return to normal when the appliance is turned off.
I already watched nearly all my montiporas kick off due to previously-mentioned problems, and then my acro frags started looking bad; one even RTN'd. To cut a long story of going-nuts-and-finding nothing-wrong short, I figured out -- by observing my weekly temp graphs through my Apex controller -- that my newly installed fuge light was electromagnetically noisy and was inducing a spurious current in my temperature probe. Every night when the light would come on, the temperature that my controller read would spike up or down four or more degrees, which of course messed with my heating regime, so my tank was experiencing temperature swings every 12 hours, and was getting down as low, at points, as 74*F, and going up to about 82. (Normally, I keep my tank at 80.)
Fortunately, once I figured out what the hell was going on, the fix was easy: wrapping a thin strip of tinfoil around the foot or so of probe cable that was inside of my stand, and which ran near the various cables running from my sump light's ballast to the bulbs.
So, a word to the wise: be aware that your probe wires can pick up interference from things like lights, even if there's no actual current leak in the tank water. This is relatively easily diagnosed when you're looking for it: when the appliance causing interference turns on, the probe readings will rapidly change, and return to normal when the appliance is turned off.
