Opinions on a crazy idea

[FishyMike]

Hello everyone in the process of acquiring parts for my 9 tank fish rack( 8-10 gallon 1-40 breeder. Had an idea and was wondering if it was an original idea or if people do this already! So I came across inkbirds bbq wifi thermometers and was thinking instead of using it for bbq using it for the rack. It has 4 probes (I would use 2) for each row of tanks the app looks like you can set temps and notifications if they dip below the temp you want!?! I think it’s cool as a safety net. What do you guys think. Oh and obviously it tells the temp and has a real time graph setting of the temps!

[Tihshho]

Check the material the probes are made from. Generally metal probes are only for temporary use and should not be submerged for long periods. Being this is a food grade probe, I'm leaning to them being less long term and more short term duration use (hours, not months or years at a time.)

If you're good at DIY and want a challenge the hardware to whip up your own wifi/digital thermometer is pretty simple with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi as a host and running multiple probes. 

Unless you're breeding hyper temp sensitive species, I wouldn't even recommend investing into a crazy thermometer setup. Cheap probe or infrared temp gun to follow up to check stuff on demand should be enough. That is unless you're not interacting with your tanks multiple times a day.

[FishyMike]

Thank you for the reality check haha!!

Edited September 2, 2021 by Mikeo

[eatyourpeas]

It is fairly trivial to do, as @Tihshho said. I've got one in my SW tank so I can monitor my chiller.

 

[CT_]

On 9/2/2021 at 3:02 PM, Tihshho said:

Check the material the probes are made from. Generally metal probes are only for temporary use and should not be submerged for long periods. Being this is a food grade probe, I'm leaning to them being less long term and more short term duration use (hours, not months or years at a time.)

food grade has to be in or around water a lot.  I bet its a stainless steel alloy and fine to submerge indefinitely in fresh water.  I'm less afraid of stainless than others here are though.

[Tihshho]

The issue isn't stainless per say, it's the quality of stainless that is being used. Being that lot of these are cheap Chinese made parts I don't have a lot of faith in long term use. If you were talking lab grade equipment, that's a whole other story.

[StevesFishTanks]

I looked at this a while back thinking about using it the same way. 

I ended up just using inkbird heater controllers on the "important" tanks and run the rest at the mercy of the heaters thermostats