customdusty
New member
Thank you!
A Customdusty Rimless Build
- Thread starter customdusty
- Start date
Thank you!
customdusty
New member
My first set-back in a while....
I lost power in one of my contollable outlets for my Apex controller, and despite some basic trouble shooting it looks like it might be dead.
It is also convenient that there is a one year warranty on a product that lasted 1 year and one month for me. Furthermore, for a new product launch wouldn't you think that your support would be a bit better to try and build your reputation? When I had an issue with one of my Vortech's when they came out, bam that thing was replaced before I blinked an eye - at no cost to me. Great service, but Neptune not so much.
With as critical as a controller is to one's system and the liveliehood of their inhabitants, as a manufacturer of controllers, wouldn't you have a better solution than to tell me to just "take it out and send it in"? It's not that easy people - hence the reason that they make CONTROLLERS!!!!!!
So my options are:
1) Do nothing, and lose valuable capacity for controlling stuff - which I need.
2) Drop a couple hundred bucks and replace it.
3) Re-invent how I control everything in my system, buy a bunch of unnecessary crap to do it, and install it all. Then send in the EB8 at my cost, for them to repair it at my cost, if it can be repaired, then sent back to me at an undetermined time and undetermined cost.
4) Do as they advised and "just pull it out and send it in", while letting everything in my tank die meanwhile.
I know I'm being a bit dramatic, but where is the customer service these days. Am I at the DMV? I'm certainly happy that they don't make anything more critical with this philosophy, like a pacemaker or heart valve - yeah just pull it out and send it in. And by the way, you have to pay for it, but I don't know what's wrong, if it can be fixed, how long it will take, or when you will get it back. Would you like to buy a new one? I have new ones in stock.
Ahhhhh!! :mad2:
:uzi: Neptune
I lost power in one of my contollable outlets for my Apex controller, and despite some basic trouble shooting it looks like it might be dead.
It is also convenient that there is a one year warranty on a product that lasted 1 year and one month for me. Furthermore, for a new product launch wouldn't you think that your support would be a bit better to try and build your reputation? When I had an issue with one of my Vortech's when they came out, bam that thing was replaced before I blinked an eye - at no cost to me. Great service, but Neptune not so much.
With as critical as a controller is to one's system and the liveliehood of their inhabitants, as a manufacturer of controllers, wouldn't you have a better solution than to tell me to just "take it out and send it in"? It's not that easy people - hence the reason that they make CONTROLLERS!!!!!!
So my options are:
1) Do nothing, and lose valuable capacity for controlling stuff - which I need.
2) Drop a couple hundred bucks and replace it.
3) Re-invent how I control everything in my system, buy a bunch of unnecessary crap to do it, and install it all. Then send in the EB8 at my cost, for them to repair it at my cost, if it can be repaired, then sent back to me at an undetermined time and undetermined cost.
4) Do as they advised and "just pull it out and send it in", while letting everything in my tank die meanwhile.
I know I'm being a bit dramatic, but where is the customer service these days. Am I at the DMV? I'm certainly happy that they don't make anything more critical with this philosophy, like a pacemaker or heart valve - yeah just pull it out and send it in. And by the way, you have to pay for it, but I don't know what's wrong, if it can be fixed, how long it will take, or when you will get it back. Would you like to buy a new one? I have new ones in stock.
Ahhhhh!! :mad2:
:uzi: Neptune
muttley000
MTS Sufferer!
This kind of stuff drives me crazy. You dropped plenty of good money on a product, and they should stand behind it, and not make it a pain in your arse! This is what happens when bean counters start running companies instead of people who had the passion to start a company or develop a product in my opinion. My advice is to let them know that you will be looking at their competitor for a replacement, and give them lots of free advertising. Good luck, and thanks for keeping your thread updated.
Its ridiculous how many things seem to break right AFTER the warranty period.
For me, at 60,000 miles my acura's factory warranty ended...at 61,000 miles for the scheduled maintenance, they found that my my front engine mount cracked and offered to replace and fix for $5,000. zzzz.
I hope they do better than what they gave you, seems ridiculous they wont honor a warranty that was only expired for a month.
For me, at 60,000 miles my acura's factory warranty ended...at 61,000 miles for the scheduled maintenance, they found that my my front engine mount cracked and offered to replace and fix for $5,000. zzzz.
I hope they do better than what they gave you, seems ridiculous they wont honor a warranty that was only expired for a month.
customdusty
New member
Nope, it kinda just stopped working.
customdusty
New member
You hit the nail on the head. I think it is furthermore important when you are a company in a niche market that is made up of very close and committed hobbyists. It just doesn't make sense to me - Happy customers are repeat customers, and happy customers refer new customers.
customdusty
New member
Funny how that works. How would you have felt if they just walked you to the showroom and started their sales pitch on a new car?
customdusty
New member
Well my new tank has since passed the one year mark, and I reflect upon the challenges I have faced and important lessons that I have learned. As I've only been in the hobby a short time, I have certainly gained a tremendous amount of experience, but I realize that I still have much to learn to become a more successful aquarist. I'll also summarize where I went wrong in my planning, or things that I have changed systemically along the way.
I faced three major challenges in the past year, all of which resulted in costly lessons learned. These lessons learned have since changed my approach to the hobby forever, and drive home the old adage "a ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".
Lesson #1 - You're never above anything in this hobby
After having some initial success I felt that as more knowledgeable and experienced reefer that I knew what was going in my tank at all times. I developed a mindset that I didn't need to test my water as often or that I didn't need to be quite as disciplined because I was just good at what I was doing. Wrong! A failure to calibrate my salinity monitor, and a failure to put in safeguards in my system controller resulted in a near catastrophic tank crash. Due to a power surge and outage, my Apex controller lost all of the programs I had set-up and was reset to default. The default setting turned my alkalinity dosing pump on for 7 hours, virtually emptying my alkalinity reservoir into my tank. The subsequent spike required several emergency water changes to bring the level back down, however in the haste to make the changes, I failed to calibrate or perform a reference check on my salinity monitor. The end result was that I drastically raised my salinity during the course of relieving the high alkalinity. Subsequently, I attributed the RTN and damage to my corals to the alkalinity spike, and did not test the water beyond the pH and alkalinity. It was at least a week before I decided to start looking elsewhere for a problem, and low and behold I found it. Followed then by more water changes to bring the salinity back down, the large swing in parameters had certainly done it's damage, and several of my once large and mature colonies were reduced to frags at best.
Lesson #2 - Pests
In the aftermath of the above disaster, I decided to re-stock my tank with some fresh SPS frags and get things going back on the right track again. Having picked up a variety of new frags from a variety of sources, I opted to place the frags directly in the tank - without any type of dips, rinses, or quarantine. Mistake! Although it took some time for the pests to populate the tank and for the effects tot be noticed, I had unknowingly introduced both acro eating flatworms (AEFW) and montipora eating nudibranches (MEN) which further decimated my SPS population. All in all, I lost no less than 30 species of SPS frags to the pests, including several expensive and rare ORA frags and several mature colonies. The AEFW targeted and decimated all millis, valida, and deepwater acros while the MEN focused only on monti caps and my red montipora digitata. Despite having a mature radiant wrasse in the tank, the populations flourished while the wrasse had little interest in the small snacks. I resolved to trying dips, rinses, blasting the corals with turkey basters, scrubbing eggs free with a tootbrush, and finally cutting out and removing affected areas. I believe my tank to now be 90% pest free, but a thorough rinse, dip, and quarantine is on order for all new additions from here on out. By far, my most expensive lesson learned.
Lesson #3 - Hospital and QT Tank for Fish
Easily the most emotionally charged lesson learned was that of proper fish quarantine. Having had success with my fish population for some time, I experienced the unfortunate loss of several fish making "leaps of faith" out of my rimless tank. One of those fish happened to be one of our favorites and the only fish that my wife had personally picked out - our royal gramma. Having discovered that the fish had gone missing, we unfortunately found it days later behind tank. I went out to locate a healthy specimen to replace it and did so, thinking that a juvenile fish would have little impact overall given the relative size and health of my fish population. A poor assumption that turned out to be. The introduction of disease spread through my tank like wildfire, wiping out a majority of my fish population before my very eyes, with little time to react. By the time I got the QT tank set-up, being days later - it was too late. To date, I've not yet recovered my fish population because I have yet to develop the skills and discipline necessary to offer an environment in which I can confidently keep healthy fish. I continue reflect on the harm that I caused and with great remorse, I refuse to keep any new fish until I have demonstrated the ability to practice better husbandry. This is something for which I seek a local mentor, someone with experience and best practices to share that might put me on the right track.
Things I've changed from my initial plan:
1) I initially started with a temporary sump and refugium to get a feel for how the "fish closet" space would work for me. I also needed a place to hold extra live rock from my tank transfer that over time I would eventually remove. Eventually I would get the rock removed, the rubbermaid sump replaced with a DIY baffled 40 breeder, and now have just put a 29g refugium back on line. I learned that cumbersome work is less likely to get done, and therefore I wanted to test drive the layout before I made anything permanent. I'm glad I did.
2) I switched light fixtures from the Giesemann Infiniti 48" 2x150w + 4x54w fixture to a Sfiligoi 36" 12x39w fixture. Although I enjoyed the look of the MH lighting, I more so enjoyed the color flexibility of a T5 fixture. The 36" fixture was also something I felt would compliment the open top rimless tank by opening up 6" on both ends. The new fixture is not only a very nice piece of equipment, but I now prefer the look of the shorter length fixture from an aesthetic perspective.
3) I switched from a kalkwasser reactor top-off to automated 2 part dosing very early on. I found that kalkwasser was messy to work with and therefore I didn't keep up with maintenance on it as required. The 2 part is much more simple and requires me to make a new batch every 6-8 weeks rather than the weekly mess I had been making with the kalkwasser.
4) I made an attempt to take my low nutrient system to the ULNS level with the bacteria/carbon dosing regiment (vodka, MB7, then Zeovit). I abandoned this because it occurred near the time of the tank crash although I may revisit this later on because I walk a very fine line of starving my corals in order to keep the system clean and looking it's best.
Other Best Practices I have adopted:
1) Keep a log book, spreadsheet, or other document that maintains your test data and record times at which you change things. This could be water test results, the date you changed brands of carbon, when you changed dosing amounts, etc.
2) Use a calendar function on your computer, Smartphone, or even an old fashion actual calendar to remind you of dates when you need to perform maintenance or tests. Infrequent tasks are ones that are easy to lose track of, perhaps have an alarm go off and remind you of when you should check or replace your RO/DI filters for example.
3) Only change one thing at a time, and do so conservatively. Everybody's reef is different, so get to know yours and what works. Don't go by guidelines printed on a bottle or posted in a thread and expect it to work. If you change more than one thing, whether the effects are positive or negative, how do you know if all worked or didn't work
4) Go slow and be patient. It takes time for both bad things and good things to be apparent. If you see something wrong, it is likely something that happened weeks ago rather than days. Likewise by the time you act, it will be weeks before the worst has past before the recovery may start.
5) Make some local friends in the hobby. Experience isn't something you can buy, borrow, or just read. Swap corals, share stories - it'll make you and your reef better in the long run.
Comparison pictures of the past year to follow soon, keep following along!
I faced three major challenges in the past year, all of which resulted in costly lessons learned. These lessons learned have since changed my approach to the hobby forever, and drive home the old adage "a ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".
Lesson #1 - You're never above anything in this hobby
After having some initial success I felt that as more knowledgeable and experienced reefer that I knew what was going in my tank at all times. I developed a mindset that I didn't need to test my water as often or that I didn't need to be quite as disciplined because I was just good at what I was doing. Wrong! A failure to calibrate my salinity monitor, and a failure to put in safeguards in my system controller resulted in a near catastrophic tank crash. Due to a power surge and outage, my Apex controller lost all of the programs I had set-up and was reset to default. The default setting turned my alkalinity dosing pump on for 7 hours, virtually emptying my alkalinity reservoir into my tank. The subsequent spike required several emergency water changes to bring the level back down, however in the haste to make the changes, I failed to calibrate or perform a reference check on my salinity monitor. The end result was that I drastically raised my salinity during the course of relieving the high alkalinity. Subsequently, I attributed the RTN and damage to my corals to the alkalinity spike, and did not test the water beyond the pH and alkalinity. It was at least a week before I decided to start looking elsewhere for a problem, and low and behold I found it. Followed then by more water changes to bring the salinity back down, the large swing in parameters had certainly done it's damage, and several of my once large and mature colonies were reduced to frags at best.
Lesson #2 - Pests
In the aftermath of the above disaster, I decided to re-stock my tank with some fresh SPS frags and get things going back on the right track again. Having picked up a variety of new frags from a variety of sources, I opted to place the frags directly in the tank - without any type of dips, rinses, or quarantine. Mistake! Although it took some time for the pests to populate the tank and for the effects tot be noticed, I had unknowingly introduced both acro eating flatworms (AEFW) and montipora eating nudibranches (MEN) which further decimated my SPS population. All in all, I lost no less than 30 species of SPS frags to the pests, including several expensive and rare ORA frags and several mature colonies. The AEFW targeted and decimated all millis, valida, and deepwater acros while the MEN focused only on monti caps and my red montipora digitata. Despite having a mature radiant wrasse in the tank, the populations flourished while the wrasse had little interest in the small snacks. I resolved to trying dips, rinses, blasting the corals with turkey basters, scrubbing eggs free with a tootbrush, and finally cutting out and removing affected areas. I believe my tank to now be 90% pest free, but a thorough rinse, dip, and quarantine is on order for all new additions from here on out. By far, my most expensive lesson learned.
Lesson #3 - Hospital and QT Tank for Fish
Easily the most emotionally charged lesson learned was that of proper fish quarantine. Having had success with my fish population for some time, I experienced the unfortunate loss of several fish making "leaps of faith" out of my rimless tank. One of those fish happened to be one of our favorites and the only fish that my wife had personally picked out - our royal gramma. Having discovered that the fish had gone missing, we unfortunately found it days later behind tank. I went out to locate a healthy specimen to replace it and did so, thinking that a juvenile fish would have little impact overall given the relative size and health of my fish population. A poor assumption that turned out to be. The introduction of disease spread through my tank like wildfire, wiping out a majority of my fish population before my very eyes, with little time to react. By the time I got the QT tank set-up, being days later - it was too late. To date, I've not yet recovered my fish population because I have yet to develop the skills and discipline necessary to offer an environment in which I can confidently keep healthy fish. I continue reflect on the harm that I caused and with great remorse, I refuse to keep any new fish until I have demonstrated the ability to practice better husbandry. This is something for which I seek a local mentor, someone with experience and best practices to share that might put me on the right track.
Things I've changed from my initial plan:
1) I initially started with a temporary sump and refugium to get a feel for how the "fish closet" space would work for me. I also needed a place to hold extra live rock from my tank transfer that over time I would eventually remove. Eventually I would get the rock removed, the rubbermaid sump replaced with a DIY baffled 40 breeder, and now have just put a 29g refugium back on line. I learned that cumbersome work is less likely to get done, and therefore I wanted to test drive the layout before I made anything permanent. I'm glad I did.
2) I switched light fixtures from the Giesemann Infiniti 48" 2x150w + 4x54w fixture to a Sfiligoi 36" 12x39w fixture. Although I enjoyed the look of the MH lighting, I more so enjoyed the color flexibility of a T5 fixture. The 36" fixture was also something I felt would compliment the open top rimless tank by opening up 6" on both ends. The new fixture is not only a very nice piece of equipment, but I now prefer the look of the shorter length fixture from an aesthetic perspective.
3) I switched from a kalkwasser reactor top-off to automated 2 part dosing very early on. I found that kalkwasser was messy to work with and therefore I didn't keep up with maintenance on it as required. The 2 part is much more simple and requires me to make a new batch every 6-8 weeks rather than the weekly mess I had been making with the kalkwasser.
4) I made an attempt to take my low nutrient system to the ULNS level with the bacteria/carbon dosing regiment (vodka, MB7, then Zeovit). I abandoned this because it occurred near the time of the tank crash although I may revisit this later on because I walk a very fine line of starving my corals in order to keep the system clean and looking it's best.
Other Best Practices I have adopted:
1) Keep a log book, spreadsheet, or other document that maintains your test data and record times at which you change things. This could be water test results, the date you changed brands of carbon, when you changed dosing amounts, etc.
2) Use a calendar function on your computer, Smartphone, or even an old fashion actual calendar to remind you of dates when you need to perform maintenance or tests. Infrequent tasks are ones that are easy to lose track of, perhaps have an alarm go off and remind you of when you should check or replace your RO/DI filters for example.
3) Only change one thing at a time, and do so conservatively. Everybody's reef is different, so get to know yours and what works. Don't go by guidelines printed on a bottle or posted in a thread and expect it to work. If you change more than one thing, whether the effects are positive or negative, how do you know if all worked or didn't work
4) Go slow and be patient. It takes time for both bad things and good things to be apparent. If you see something wrong, it is likely something that happened weeks ago rather than days. Likewise by the time you act, it will be weeks before the worst has past before the recovery may start.
5) Make some local friends in the hobby. Experience isn't something you can buy, borrow, or just read. Swap corals, share stories - it'll make you and your reef better in the long run.
Comparison pictures of the past year to follow soon, keep following along!
Great writeup custom! The lessons in this hobby are never-ending and also the need for humility, which it seems you have in abundance. I really anticipate the continued success of your reef. My current tank http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1644086 is my second reef after being out of the hobby for three years. I learned a great deal in my first go-round, but by the time I came back, so many things had changed like the idea of using T5s for more than just supplemental lighting and carbon dosing. It was almost like starting all over again in terms of reef knowledge. Many of your tribulations, I have experienced myself; one in particular, is prompting me right now while I have a couple of days at home... to go and backup the program on my APEX- thanks for the push!
Great Job Bro!
Great Job Bro!
customdusty
New member
I am pleased to share that my build thread and tank have been recognized as a "Noteworthy Tank" by another forum. A weekly reef-focused Podcast is available, where "Noteworthy Tanks" is a recurring segment where individual tanks are discussed.
You can visit the website at http://www.reefthreads.com. There is a tab for past and current Noteworthy Tanks, and also separate links where you can listen to the Podcasts, including the most recent Podcast #13.
Hopefully I will have more informaiton to share soon.
I am humbled and most certainly appreciate the recognition.
You can visit the website at http://www.reefthreads.com. There is a tab for past and current Noteworthy Tanks, and also separate links where you can listen to the Podcasts, including the most recent Podcast #13.
Hopefully I will have more informaiton to share soon.
I am humbled and most certainly appreciate the recognition.
aquaph8
Love The Fish
Custom, you have learned more in a short time than I have in 10 years. To this day I still talk to reefers that have been around for a long time that cant get all the points you just touched on. Sure you learned some stuff the hard way but by the looks of your tank it made you stronger. Great write up and beautiful tank.
JG1
New member
My Apex just died after one week of use. I have this thing controlling my whole tank. I have to send it in to have them fix it now (actually just dropped it off at the post office)....wth am I supposed to do about controlling my tank until I get it back...UGHHH
customdusty
New member
That stinks, but at least they will problably replace it for you since you are within warranty. Kinda lousy that it died so soon though. Like I said, you would figure that the support for controllers would be a lot better since they are so critical to the function and well being of our systems.
customdusty
New member
A few recent pictures.
customdusty
New member
wellington mart
New member
I really enjoyed your overflow system which the flow of the overflow, he and silent, for I am setting up a reef with measures similar to yours and am wanting to ride with the same burst.
