PSA: Neptune Apex

S

spseminara

New member
Tonight is the saddest reef'ing day of my life. After being in the hobby for 22 years my tank crashed. I learned a lot through those 22 years. The first couple years were tough partly because I was 15 Over the last 7 years I learned a lot about automation and how important it is to ensure a consistent environment for our marine friends. Well, yesterday evening a storm rolled in where it triggered my GFCI to trip. It wasn't till I got home tonight to feed my fish tonight that I realized this had happened.

I’m certainly lost for words as I was netting all of my dead fish out. I had some of these fish for 15+ years. What I’m most disappointed in is the fact my #Neptune #APEX failed to alert me of the outage. I invested heavily in their entire ecosystem only to be let down for one of the sole reasons why I purchased the solution. After doing a little research I now find out you will not receive an alert when the device loses power, only when power is restore to the Apex, even if you are using APEX Fusion. This is sort of like investing in a home fire monitoring solution and only being alerted after the fire has burnt your house to the ground.

I’m suffering from a lot of mixed emotions tonight. I’m torn between starting over, but leaning towards closing this chapter and coming back to the hobby later in my life. If there is anything you take from this post, please be aware the Neptune APEX is not a solution for monitoring electrical power availability to your tank.

In total I lost: Yellow Tang, Purple Tang, Sohal Tang, Chevron Tang, V Tang, Naso Tang, Hippo Tang, Borbonius Anthias, Peppermint Wrasse, Radian Wrasse, Mystery Wrasse, Skunk Clown, Flame Angel, Longnose Hawk Fish, Mandarin Goby and countless LPS & SPS's. View attachment 21607
 
I'm sorry to hear you went through this.
Many locals stopped using GFCI because when they trip someone had to reset and start it back. In this case ii would say the GFCI would be the blame not the apex. If the system would been in a regular outlet wether the power was out for 1 minute or 5hrs it would power back on and the apex would send the alarm.

Again. Sorry for what happened
 
Sooo sorry to hear about the devestation.

Apex has it's limitations, there are ways to setup monitoring if the apex goes off line, but i havn't heard of one that's not IT professional oriented. One of the simpliest still isn't easy, setting up a ping monotring tool from an internet baed computer, when ping fails, it'll cut you an alert. There's also a battery backup solution. If you keep your apex, router and any switches always on a UPS, you can setup a virtual outlet system that'll trigger and send you an email if an EB8 looses ac power.

Good luck with the hard decision to rebuild or not.
 
Wow sorry for your lose. Im finding out more and more that apex is very unreliable specially with the fusion part of it . Considering most get controllers for the reason of piece of mind while on vacation or just not home for equipment failure or mother nature in your case . It really just doesn't work my fusion which is hard wired btw went out three times already each time had to be reset manually at the screen well what good does that do you. In my case i also run a reef keeper elite which is old trusty never fails comes back up as soon as power kicks back in or my generater kicks on . Sure reefkeeper net is slow as hell but it has never failed me . I will be sticking with all the important stuff on reef keeper all the b/ like lights and what not to the junk azz apex. Your story is another example of more expensive is always better and apex failed once again . For the kinda money they ask they should be bullet proof to a certain degree
 
What a bummer...sorry to here this.

Regarding the Apex, it's just a tool to help you build your system...so it requires a system plan.. Just like the plumbing of a reef tank, you have to think about "how things can fail" and simulate failures to test the system. Fail safe is really hard....there is always something :(

The least obvious fail, until it happens, is power supply. I have gone round and round on this, because ComEd has let me down 7 times in the last year! Whole house generators are $$$, so my fall back plan is the simple part of jrpark22000's comments "keep apex AND router on a UPS, and setup a virtual outlet system that'll trigger and send you an email if house looses power." This does NOT solve the power out problem, but it at least notifies me so I can do something (Honda EU2000i portable generator).

I'd encourage you to "attack" your clean up...many things become much harder to clean as they "setup"....get through it and then step back and think about "what would be fun". Good luck!
 
From my discussions there is a Heartbeat function availabile as part of the APEX Fusion portal. It's new and would have alerted me.
 
Jeez... so sorry for your losses. :(

I've been considering a UPS for this very reason. It may not solve the entire problem but it gives you a fighting chance.
 
Oh wow, I'm so sorry to hear about your loss. That truly sucks.

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I'm sorry about the loss. I was going to mention heartbeat but I see you now know about it. Everyone needs heartbeat. It's saved my tank more than once

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I have used Apes for a few years, luckily no issues here. YET. I cant find how to enable Hearbeat on fusion. Can you give me a hint where to look. Is it an addon program or part of Fusion?
 
If you google. It will tell you how to enable it.
Basically you have to meet a criteria...one of those is to have a disconnect to fusion one day before.
So on fusion you click settings, the three lines up left. Then select your apex and the pop up while have a house click the house and one of the options at the very bottom is the heartbeat.
 
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