Apex controller requirements

I'm considering purchasing a controller because once we buy a house I plan on upgrading to a huge tank which I feel I'll definately want it for, but I'm thinking it is something I could add now that would benefit my 40B but would work for my 240 (I think) later... there is not a lot of other equipment that I can say the same about, because I'm not currently running a sump, I think I'll probably end up converting the 40B in to a sump once the big tank is up and running. I currently have just a simple DIY PVC skimmer that is inside my tank that I thought about upgrading and adding an overflow to my tank, but if I were to buy the skimmer I'll need for the 240 it would be way overkill on my 40B. I can't really think of anything else I could add now that will benefit the 40B and will be needed for the larger tank later...



so I've started looking in to controllers and it seems like apex is the way to go, and it seems like the best thing to do with knowing I will be going to the large tank would be to get the apex gold so it has the lab grade pH, ORP, and salinity probes. Now where my question really comes up is what else does apex have available that would be beneficial to simplify things?



Also, as far as controlling LED's will the Apex just slowly ramp up the power supplied to the LED? So can I just crank my LED fixtures up to 100% then use the controller to control their brightness in order to get the fade in/out? I'm thinking long term on the big tank I'm probably going to go with three LED fixtures (currently using the reefbreeders value LED type of LED's), but I might supplement a T5HO or MH light on the large tank once it is up and running since I'm reading more and more about LED's not cutting it for corals... thought running a single MH or a one or two tube T5HO supplement won't be terribly expensive compared to trying to run just T5HO or MH as your main lights.