High Tide Aquatics

Where’s your temp probe?

Squist

Squist

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In the sump or display?

Last couple days temperature has inched up in the tank. After hooking up the fan, it’s got me thinking about where best to place:

1. heater’s thermostat probe
2. Apex temp probe
3. the heater itself.

Right now all three are in the sump with both probes “up river” from the heater.

I searched around but didn’t find anything convincingly definitive.
 
sump where it's closest to heater and chiller return... I have my probe and chiller in the middle section, and chiller return on the tank return portion. Reason being is that the tank water coming down has an ample amount of time to mix with cooler \ warmer waters to give me the most accurate reading and input to whether to run heater or chiller
 
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I do not have Apex. For convenience, the therm. probe and heater are both in the return chamber apart from each other. Once I have a secure way of keeping the therm. probe from moving, I think I will put the probe further up river (would that be better IDK?). I do not trust the little suction cup on the probe to keep it in place in another chamber. I feel it will detach then rise out of the water.
 
My heater is in the skimmer area where water gets dumped from tanks, and temp probe in the return chamber. I have a fuge chamber in the middle with Marco algae


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I use my finger
it's always calibrated and always with me
works as hydrometer too

oops, miss read this as what is, not where is
my temp probes are as far away as possible in the flow direction
probe before heater
 
My probes are in the drain chamber and the heater is in the pump chamber....that way if water coming down from display is cold, the heater will warm the water being pumped up into the display
 
I always use 2 probs.
One in sump and one in the DT inside the overflow box.
Not only I can fine tune when to turn on the heater better(some times DT get warmer or colder than sump based certain situation) but I also can tell if something went wrong and other sensors did not catch it like return flow failure, flow rate student reduction..etc.
I also have my chiller follow the prob reading of the sump and the heater follow thenprob reading of the DT..why is related to where I have these probs..
 
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I put the heater controller probe in the return chamber - since that's the closest to the water entering the DT. The Apex probe is in the same chamber as the heater, so if something goes wrong and the heater sticks on, Apex will shut it down quickly. The heater is in the chamber before the return - where the skimmer lives.
 
I have one in the sump/refuge with my other probes (up stream from my heaters), one in the canopy (did this when I had MHm but kept it there when I changed to LEDs) and the last one is behind my module cabinet to measure the ambient room temp.
 
jonmos75 said:
I have one in the sump/refuge with my other probes (up stream from my heaters), one in the canopy (did this when I had MHm but kept it there when I changed to LEDs) and the last one is behind my module cabinet to measure the ambient room temp.
Click to expand...

I'm counting three. Interesting, including ambient heat. I like the potential of that. Just add a PM2 it sounds like.

First though I'd probably add one in the display.
 
RE temp probe placement, given nearly all responses indicate probe in sump (typically enclosed) does that probe run warmer than DT?

I should have made an adjustment for what happened two days in a row this week. When spikes like this happen, if probe is in sump, is it as pronounced in the DT also as the chart below suggests? I'm guessing no, but relatively. I'm considering moving the Apex probe to DT for a more accurate measure but if it's negligible won't bother.

Squist Sump Temp 202004.png
 
Squist said:
RE temp probe placement, given nearly all responses indicate probe in sump (typically enclosed) does that probe run warmer than DT?

I should have made an adjustment for what happened two days in a row this week. When spikes like this happen, if probe is in sump, is it as pronounced in the DT also as the chart below suggests? I'm guessing no, but relatively. I'm considering moving the Apex probe to DT for a more accurate measure but if it's negligible won't bother.

View attachment 15268
Click to expand...
The difference between dt prob and sump prob depend on the location of the heater, chiller and the flow rate inside your sump..
 
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