Within the first few days of having the tank up and running, I flooded my stand and carpet with a skimmer gone crazy. Lesson learned, one of the things I did was to buy a waterbug and hook it up to my Apex. The waterbug has since (fortunately/unfortunately) alerted me to a few other water mishaps all in enough time to stop the problem before it got out of hand. I thought I would share what information I have about the waterbug with others.

The model I bought is the WB200. It is made by Winland Electronics. To set up the waterbug you connect six wires: 2 for power, 2 for the sensor and 2 to communicate to the Apex. It does not come with a power supply. I hunted around the house and cannibalized one we had in a box of bits and bobs.

The waterbug will alarm if water connects two of the terminals at the bottom of the sensor. You can hook up as many as six sensors and locate them up to 100 feet away.

The main confusion that people have is how to wire up the apex sensor. The Apex itself needs to have a breakout box. Either you can make one or buy one. I opted to make one and used networking components. You can find all the details on this thread in RC (http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847474).

The breakout box basically allows the Apex to have six on/off switches that you can program against. These can be float switches or something like the waterbug. In my case I wired up a RJ45 plug to two wires and then connected the two wires to the C and NO (normally open) terminals of the waterbug. You have the option of wiring one wire to the NC (normally closed) terminal as well. It just changes the logic of your programming. In my case if the waterbug is alarming, the switch is on. If I wired it the other way around, the switch would be off when it was alarming.

Apex Programming
I have created a virtual outlet called Waterbug and programmed it as follows:

Fallback OFF
Set OFF
If Switch2 CLOSED Then ON
If Switch2 OPEN Then OFF

Then I have programmed the ATO and skimmer to turn off if the waterbug is on - just in case either is causing the issue at hand. The Apex will also alarm and email me.

wiring looks great!! (much better seeing it up off the bottom of the stand.. )

I have a float switch in my skimmer collection cup lid that turns off the skimmer pump if the level gets too high. It is a nice failsafe. DA, not Apex, but the same principle. Hooks into a switch outlet on my SL1.

That is a great idea, Acroholic. One step before disaster. I was also thinking of some more obvious things to do, like raise up the ATO container so that it is above, not below the sump so there is no chance for a reverse siphon. I had two floods from that.

That is a great idea, Acroholic. One step before disaster. I was also thinking of some more obvious things to do, like raise up the ATO container so that it is above, not below the sump so there is no chance for a reverse siphon. I had two floods from that.


Leave the ATO container below the sump, but have the outlet even higher.

That is a great idea, Acroholic. One step before disaster. I was also thinking of some more obvious things to do, like raise up the ATO container so that it is above, not below the sump so there is no chance for a reverse siphon. I had two floods from that.

Just have the ATO tube out of the sump water, then no chance of a back siphon. My ATO drips water into the sump about 4-5 inches above the sump water level.

I have my tube out of the sump as well but I also have two little ones who fiddle with things. In one case they put the tube in the water, in another case they put the tube outside the sump. I guess I should look at childproofing my setup. :-)