About to give up on Neptune. Help?!?!

Andrew Schubert · Dec 4, 2018

So I setup my own DIY ATO with my Neptune controller. I installed one of their optical eye sensors to detect the water level. And thankfully, I installed a float switch for the high water. Well in the 3 days I've had it up and running here is my experience.

Day 1 - come home from work and the water is about an 1inch below the sensor. Yet Apex doesn't detect it and never turned on my ATO. Played around with it, disconnected everything, plugged it back in and everything looked like it was working.

Day 2 - come home and same thing. Sensor never detected the water was below and never activated my ATO. Unplugged everything again, and seemed to be working fine again.

Day 3 - Come home and again water is below the sensor. Did all the same again, and seemed to be working. I come back an hour later to see my water really cloudy. Yea, glad I checked when I did, b/c it filled up to my emergency float and pumped about 2 gallons of KALK into my tank. It never detected the water line was ABOVE, and never shut off.

So 3 days into this, and it hasn't worked once yet. Not to mention my leak detectors I got also have been very finicky.

Has anyone had these problems as well? I'm wondering if my FMM module is bad? I'm so unplugging my kalk reactor until this gets figure out, or finds its way into the garbage can :-(.

MJNTWise · Dec 4, 2018

Whats your code?

Andrew Schubert · Dec 4, 2018

MJNTWise said:
Whats your code?

It has nothing to do with the code. The sensors themselves aren't activating. The sensor says 'closed' even though the water is below the sensor. And then it'll say 'open' even though the water is above the sensor. So it really doesn't matter if the code was 'good' or 'bad', the sensors themselves have been utterly useless. The only sensor that has been reliable is the backup float switch connected to my breakout box.

Burrito · Dec 4, 2018

I have the atk and fmm from Neptune. Sorry to say between 6 sets of sensors...they all have been bad. Switched back to tunze

Andrew Schubert · Dec 4, 2018

Burrito said:
I have the atk and fmm from Neptune. Sorry to say between 6 sets of sensors...they all have been bad. Switched back to tunze

I was going to go with tunze, but I got the little fishies kalk reactor. I was afraid the Tunze wouldn't be powerful enough to stir the kalk with it. The recommend a pump of 200gph or greater.

Andrew Schubert · Dec 4, 2018

Just thought of this. Could my kalk be throwing the sensors off? Maybe I'll try moving the sensors to the opposite side of the tank

MJNTWise · Dec 5, 2018

I use 3 of the optical sensors on my system. Any time they say close when the water level is below them, it's because there's something on them. I just whip them with my finger with water and clean them and then they start working agsin....I'm thinking your kalk water is messing with them....hope this helps

Andrew Schubert · Dec 5, 2018

MJNTWise said:
I use 3 of the optical sensors on my system. Any time they say close when the water level is below them, it's because there's something on them. I just whip them with my finger with water and clean them and then they start working agsin....I'm thinking your kalk water is messing with them....hope this helps[/QUOTE

I moved the sensor to the first chamber and the ATO line to the last chamber. Things SEEMED to be working fine last night. We'll see if its still working when I get home from work today. Until I'm satisfied I'm just dosing RODI water/no KALK. I did about a 70% water change yesterday to get the PH back down, and it was still at 8.5 (8.2 this morning). Thankfully, doesn't look like its caused any issues in the tank with my livestock.

The only thing that makes no sense is if it was the Kalk messing the sensors up, then why didn't they ever kick in at the start when the water went below the line as the Kalk was never introduced to the tank yet, and didn't have a chance to mess things up. Hmmm, well I guess we'll see . ... This thing was suppose to make my life easier, so far its made it 200% harder.

MSB123 · Dec 5, 2018

Ill take your modules! I have fixed a fmm before. Lmk

JDtimk · Dec 6, 2018

Your story is an example of why I run my kalkwasser independent of my ATO. Tunze for the ATO and I control a dosing pump for Kalkwasser separately. From what I have read the Neptune ATK is really unreliable.

ddrueckh · Dec 6, 2018

Tunze has a switched outlet that you can hook up to their system. The switched outlet replaces the pump that comes with the system and allows you to use any pump you want. I am running it and it works great!

vhuang168 · Dec 6, 2018

Are the ports on auto detect?

Sometimes there is a delay in the change of state when viewed in Fusion. Use the local dashboard for a more direct representation of the sensor states.

Andrew Schubert · Dec 6, 2018

vhuang168 said:
Are the ports on auto detect?

Sometimes there is a delay in the change of state when viewed in Fusion. Use the local dashboard for a more direct representation of the sensor states.

Yeah I use the local dashboard. I reset the whole system and so far seems like it might be working right??? At the least I added more safe guards. I lowered the emergency float, so that will not activated if more then about 1/8 gallon gets added, as well as tell the ATO to turn. Off if PH goes above 8.4. I want to have it tell it not to run longer then 30 sec but haven't quite figured the code out for that yet.

Andrew Schubert · Dec 7, 2018

Is there a way to set an alert if a particular item turns 'on'. Until I'm satisfied, I want Neptune to send me an alert if my ATO turns on so I can monitor it, but can't figure out what the code would be.

I've tried...

If ATO = On THEN ON
If ATO On THEN ON
If Power ATO On THEN ON

But they all throw errors. So I'm thinking there is no way to set an alarm if a particular item gets turned on?

RussM · Dec 7, 2018

The proper syntax is:

If Output output-name = On(or Off) Then ON(or OFF)

In your case:

If Output ATO = On Then ON

Daniel@R2R · Dec 7, 2018

I agree with others that it seems the Kalk may be the issue. I've been running an ATK for over a year now and never had an issue.

leepink23 · Dec 7, 2018

Andrew Schubert said:
Yeah I use the local dashboard. I reset the whole system and so far seems like it might be working right??? At the least I added more safe guards. I lowered the emergency float, so that will not activated if more then about 1/8 gallon gets added, as well as tell the ATO to turn. Off if PH goes above 8.4. I want to have it tell it not to run longer then 30 sec but haven't quite figured the code out for that yet.

When on > 000:30 then off should shut it off after 30 seconds.

Andrew Schubert · Dec 7, 2018

mdbannister said:
I agree with others that it seems the Kalk may be the issue. I've been running an ATK for over a year now and never had an issue.

Well I found the issue kind of. It is not the sensors, but the FMM module. It won't stay connected if I connect it to the energy block. But so far seems to keep a connection, if connected directly to the head unit. I'm thinking my power block is bad. Gonna give it the weekend before contacting Neptune with my suspensions.

Daniel@R2R · Dec 7, 2018

Andrew Schubert said:
Well I found the issue kind of. It is not the sensors, but the FMM module. It won't stay connected if I connect it to the energy block. But so far seems to keep a connection, if connected directly to the head unit. I'm thinking my power block is bad. Gonna give it the weekend before contacting Neptune with my suspensions.

Definitely reach out to them. I've had good experiences with their customer service. I'm sure they'll work to help you get it taken care of.

Andrew Schubert · Dec 8, 2018

So I'm not sure my WAVs are working right now either. I opened a new thread about that issues. I think I got a lemon :-(.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/issue-with-wav-powerheads.520497/