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Dosing Pump Questions

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:45 am
by maleci
After some issues with the wifi I got most of the other ports programmed pretty easily. As I am setting up on a new tank I am still learning the dosing requirements and have been tweaking the dosing program as the tank gets more livestock. I got the mg and ca balanced pretty well but seem to be having issues with the alk dosing. I adjusted up the time in the function with parameters (port, 120,360,420). I've been testing and notice it still isn't keeping up with the tank and increase the last parameter daily but notice the alk/ph values seem to drop at the same rate as the day before. Is there some hard limit on how long you can run the dosing pumps in this function? I know there was a max cap on the ato timeout in memory and wasn't sure if something existed like this for the dosing pumps or why increasing the time it runs doesn't seem to make any impact on water parameters.

Re: Dosing Pump Questions

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 9:46 am
by rimai
Which function are you using?

Re: Dosing Pump Questions

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 9:54 am
by maleci
ReefAngel.DosingPumpRepeat(port4,120,360,420) The last param I've been playing with after testing daily trying to get it dialed in. If I manually run the pump through the phone a few minutes gets me a readable change in PH so I find it hard to believe if the actual runtime is going up by 2+ minutes each time it runs that the alk would drop at anywhere near the same rate.

Re: Dosing Pump Questions

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 10:07 am
by rimai
This is how the function is declared:

Code: Select all

void ReefAngelClass::DosingPumpRepeat(byte DPRelay, int OffsetMinute, int RepeatMinute, byte RunTime)
RunTime is limited to 255 seconds
Your function is actually running every 6 hours for 165 seconds (420-255=165) with 120minutes offset.
May I ask what you are dosing for that long?
I'm just curious cause my Alk solution runs for 3 seconds only.

Re: Dosing Pump Questions

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 10:30 am
by maleci
The BRS 2 part alk. The pump only does 1ml a minute though.

Re: Dosing Pump Questions

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 10:51 am
by rimai
One way is to dose more frequently, so you can compensate the shorter doses.
Or we can come up with a custom function for you.

Re: Dosing Pump Questions

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 10:56 am
by maleci
Yeah, I'll go break it down to more frequent dosing. I figured there was some hard limit on how much it could dose just wanted to verify before I start reworking a dosing schedule.

Re: Dosing Pump Questions

Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 11:40 am
by maleci
I cut down the time to an hour and even with it maxed out it's already having a hard time keeping up and the tank is very lightly stocked. Is there a workaround to get past the hardset max time?

Re: Dosing Pump Questions

Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 12:04 pm
by rimai
If this gets to Curt in time, we'll have a fix in the upcoming update.
If not, I'll come up with a custom function for you.