BoomCorals
2500 Club Member
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2017
- Messages
- 4,653
- Reaction score
- 7,383
- Location
- Milwaukee, WI
- What state or country do you live in
- Wisconsin
Lets set the stage. I like to save the environment and my pocketbook so I commute to my day job via bus. It is a stress free ride to work, but the bus only runs during rush hours. If you need to go home in the middle of the day, you'll need another option.
Shorty after arriving to work, I get an apex alert that an eb8 has lost power. I check a couple IP cameras on the tanks and can see power is still on at the house, but everything controlled by the apex is off. This includes the all important return pump. I call a buddy to ask if he is available to stop and checkout what's going on. He stops by a half hour later and says, one GFCI has been blown and one of the 20 amp circuits that controls the hydronic heat of the house (and aquarium) is blown. I ask him to reset the GFCI and tripped circuit. Everything comes back online and I can see the aquarium heat kicks on. What a relief.
30 min later. It happens again.
This time I was watching the apex, and it seemed to giving me screams for help before the GFCI gave it the relief it wanted and cut the power. Although I’m not an electrician, seeing readings of amps spike to 74 were enough to make me call an Uber to head home and take a look at what was going on myself. This time when the apex came back online, it had lost all the programming. I spent the next couple hours troubleshooting and attempting to restore the settings from backup, only to lose all faith that it was in good working order. I called my LFS BestFish and explained my situation and asked if they had a new Apex in stock that I could come pickup immediately. They did! I spent the next 4 hours or so setting up and reprogramming the many components that were run by the Apex.
I now see the downfall first hand of a monolithic aquarium control system. It’s so convenient to have everything controlled in one place, but can be catastrophic if something goes very wrong in the main “brain”. That said, I just love it too much to give up! I decided to setup another apex just to monitor my system and send me notification if something is wrong with the first. If nothing else it gives me piece of mind.
Shorty after arriving to work, I get an apex alert that an eb8 has lost power. I check a couple IP cameras on the tanks and can see power is still on at the house, but everything controlled by the apex is off. This includes the all important return pump. I call a buddy to ask if he is available to stop and checkout what's going on. He stops by a half hour later and says, one GFCI has been blown and one of the 20 amp circuits that controls the hydronic heat of the house (and aquarium) is blown. I ask him to reset the GFCI and tripped circuit. Everything comes back online and I can see the aquarium heat kicks on. What a relief.
30 min later. It happens again.
This time I was watching the apex, and it seemed to giving me screams for help before the GFCI gave it the relief it wanted and cut the power. Although I’m not an electrician, seeing readings of amps spike to 74 were enough to make me call an Uber to head home and take a look at what was going on myself. This time when the apex came back online, it had lost all the programming. I spent the next couple hours troubleshooting and attempting to restore the settings from backup, only to lose all faith that it was in good working order. I called my LFS BestFish and explained my situation and asked if they had a new Apex in stock that I could come pickup immediately. They did! I spent the next 4 hours or so setting up and reprogramming the many components that were run by the Apex.
I now see the downfall first hand of a monolithic aquarium control system. It’s so convenient to have everything controlled in one place, but can be catastrophic if something goes very wrong in the main “brain”. That said, I just love it too much to give up! I decided to setup another apex just to monitor my system and send me notification if something is wrong with the first. If nothing else it gives me piece of mind.
