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Dark Reefs OS

A reef runs on time, not attention.

An aquarium controller built from the ground up — dosing, top-off, chemistry, outlets and lighting on one wired bus. It was a long time in the building. Since mid-August it has been running an established reef tank, wired in beside a commercial controller so every reading has something proven to be checked against. So far it is holding up.

The LCD Display module

Dashboard

A wired panel at the tank — it reads the whole system, so the numbers are there without reaching for a phone.

Dark Reefs OS dashboard showing temperature, pH, salinity and ORP readings, a 24-hour trend chart, recent activity and water chemistry results.

Dashboard. Live probe readings, a 24-hour trend recorded to the controller itself, and the latest chemistry results. Each card says how much history it is actually showing, so a fresh reboot can't masquerade as a full day.

Real screens from the current build (v2.0.0-dev), captured by driving the running app. The controller itself has been on a reef aquarium since mid-August — but the numbers in these particular screenshots come from the development simulator, not from that tank. So treat this page as a sample. A live interface you can click through for yourself is going up here soon.

Where it stands · September 2026

Built in the open, on real hardware.

This is a working system, not a product announcement. There's nothing to buy yet, and no date being promised.

  • Running an established reef tank since mid-August 2026. On the aquarium it was built for, and updated remotely since.
  • Accurate. It has sat in the same water as a commercial controller ever since — weeks of side-by-side readings, not a one-day test. Across a full day of paired samples the two agreed to within 0.01 pH.
  • Lighting works. A full day's schedule, sent to the fixtures and verified on them.
  • Its own hardware. The controller board and a wired LCD control panel were designed here, built, and are working.
  • The core is finished. Dosing, top-off, chemistry, outlets, lighting, scheduling, automation, history and backups.
  • In progress. Pump control, remote access from outside the house, and the next revision of the controller board.
  • Not yet. Alert notifications, and an all-in-one chemistry tester.