Gilroy 425g Build Thread (All Apex, all the time)

[Damion]

Yeah, in Florida with FP&L we have some of the lowest rates in the US.

 

[nelson69]

Terence how much is to run the 425 on electricity and supplements? I am getting a 450 maybe this week or next week! Super exited about this.

 

[Terence]

Terence how much is to run the 425 on electricity and supplements? I am getting a 450 maybe this week or next week! Super exited about this.

If you haven't already budgeted you probably don't want to know. Owning a tank of this size costs about a car payment.

 

[nelson69]

Of a ferrari or honda civic?

 

[Terence]

Now that depends if you live in FL or CA and whether you go Jebao or Abyzz.

 

[nelson69]

FL and jebao

 

[nelson69]

One jebao for return and two jebao wp-60 for flow

 

[Terence]

That was actually just a metaphor. In reality your tank will probably cost you about $200-$250 per month when you add up the electricity and consumables.

 

[Extinguishfire]

I figured after release of New apex controller that we would see your thread activity going crazy with all that you will do with it on your tank.

 

[Terence]

I am Hoping to bring one home tomorrow, in the box, and convert over to an official shipping version this weekend.

There is much to do control and automation wise for sure. And, for the time being I will not be the poster child for good wire management so I hope I am not held to the standards of some of the best freaks out there!

 

[mwilk19]

I am Hoping to bring one home tomorrow, in the box, and convert over to an official shipping version this weekend.

There is much to do control and automation wise for sure. And, for the time being I will not be the poster child for good wire management so I hope I am not held to the standards of some of the best freaks out there!

You mean it's not supposed to look like spaghetti?

 

[Damion]

FL and jebao

In FL, I have a 90gal DC12,000 return, 2x wavs, LED lights, Eheim 1250 on CArx, booster pump on RO, DOS AWC, mj1200 pho4 media, 1,600ft2 house, for a total FP&L bill of $100 Summer, $80 not Summer. No gas appliances either.

 

[Terence]

OK, so today was the first weekend day off I have had at home for over three weeks. I woke up at 6:00 and tried to go back to sleep but all I could think of were the things I wanted to do on the tank!

So, by 6:20 I got out of bed and pulled myself a triple shot of espresso from the Saeco and made my self a nice capp.



First up was to clean up under the tank, remove the alpha-rev version of the Apex I had been running in parallel and move some things around. Of course I left the Energy Bar 832 in place. Instead of the 1Link, it would now run the WAVs and also most of the items I want to track power consumption on. I still will ultimately have a final clean up on this board, but for now it is simply a place to hang things until I get everything functional.



Once I finished that up, it was time to head downstairs to the Fish Cave.

Yesterday I picked up a brand new Apex from production so that I could take the entire user experience for a spin and make sure everything was in order. I am the guy the engineers hate because if something can break, I will find it! This is main part of my control center as it was this morning before I took it all apart.



Here is the new Apex box with the Apex Classic sitting on top.



And here is what the box flap reveal is like:



And here is what you will find inside:


So I remounted everything. Very nice feature that flip up on the Apex Base, I'm glad someone was thinking



INSERT SECOND PIC

Setup was pretty easy - I followed the Get Started guide pretty much to a tee. I was able to get it on the wi-fi network super easy and did an immediate AOS (Apex Operating System - formally known as firmware) update live over wi-fi. It took it about three minutes to complete and then I was at the new Apex dashboard (looks very much like the Apex Fusion dashboard but with slightly different colors).



From there I linked it to Apex Fusion and I was off to the races. Now the "fun" began. Your programming/configuration from your previous Apex (if you have one) does not directly copy over but there is a way to get a print out. I decided to wing it and start from scratch and do a clean set up.

One of the really neat things about the new Apex is that within Apex Fusion you can easily update firmware on every module and even rename them. This is awesome. And, the response time was fast so I was able to rename all my Energy Bars and Modules with a prefix so I would know where they were physically (RC=ReefCave, AQ = Aquarium).

Overall this process took me a couple of hours but it wasn't too bad.

Here is a snapshot of 80% of my dashboard right now:



Here is the module set up screens in Fusion:



Once I had everything in there, I went to lunch and then let things run a while so I could get some data on power use. Here is the overview graph from tonight as well as a graph showing how you can see your lighting Watts compared to your PAR when you use the PMK.



Once you get some baseline data from your devices you can set up boundaries for alerts. This way if your device starts failing - say the skimmer air line gets clogged - you can know because it will be using an abnormally low, or in this case high amount of power. So here is a screen of how easy that is to set up in Apex Fusion:

Find the baseline:



And then set the boundaries on the Input screen for the device (i.e. OutputName+W for Watts)



Now I will get an text alert for that - of course this can be accessed in programming as well so you could do some crazy cool things with this data.

Well, thats all for now. Here is one last pic of the board with the Apex and EB832 installed. Many have complained how big it is. As you can see, it does not really occupy more space than before and now I have five more outlets (1Link and 1Link DC24 outlets) and I was able to take down the PM2.

 

[Terence]

I forgot to mention I also installed a PMK today as well. I am going to get into the benefits of real-time and ongoing PAR measurement down the road when my lights get installed.

 

[Terence]

Oh, I told you I was going to have a busy day! This week I received a very nice surprise from my friend Ralph at Sicce USA. He decided to help out and send me a Sicce Syncra Pro 3000 to replace that point of sale AquaBee Pump once and for all. Thanks Ralph and Sicce!

So today I went down and right away I saw how easy it would be to convert. I simply cut off one of the pipe pieces and then for the other I screwed the hose up onto the threaded piece and then secured all of them with hose clamps. Worked like a charm and the pump is humming along. So happy! Now I hope it lasts a bit longer than those crappy AquaBee pumps!





Oh, and I took apart the last AquaBee pump just for giggles. Take a look, the impeller exploded!

 

[Terence]

And, one last thing for the day. I got some nice goodies at RAP in NYC. First, Joseph from Marine Depot was gracious enough to give me one of their fancy AquaMaxx coral flashlights. This thing is amazing! It has two intensities and a focus ring. It really lets you see the total potential of a coral when you amp up the low end of the spectrum.



Also, I was able to get this gem at the show as well - I call him "Two Face"

 

[Afishionado]

Very nice update!! I remember that two face. I forgot who showed it to me... Was it at cherry corals?

 

[Terence]

Hobe Sound!

 

[hybridazn]

Great update!

 

[Fishlee]

What is the orange board your used to mount everything on? Is it wood painted orange or acrylic?

New apex looks awesome wish I could update to the new one but not really sure I want to reprogram everything

Let's see the tank with those metal halides on!