Tank Crash: Apex Warning

[johnmiller81]

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.

 

[FishD@ddy]

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.

John very very sorry to hear this and thank you for sharing about the APEX. It is very unfortunate. But with all the years of experience and everything you have learned, you will always be able to make this happen again. Good luck my friend.


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[scuzy]

Tank Crash: Apex Warning

Sorry for the lost. It's just a way to start fresh again. Neptune did just added a apex heart beat alert just for this situation .

 

[DasCamel]

I've been getting alerts when Fusion can't communicate with my tank. Was able to alert people when on vacation. Been around for a while. I can walk downstairs trip the gfci and that triggers both text & email to my wife and I.

Puzzling.

Were you using just the Apex without Fusion?

 

[Kaiser699a]

Whatever the technical reason for the failure I am so sorry for you. That tank was beautiful. Take a few days before deciding whether to continue or not. I know you are devastated/angry/fed up now but let that pass for a few days and then decide.

 

[homer1475]

Yeah as others have said, did you not setup the heartbeat feature rolled out about a year ago now?

Yes it takes 30 to 40 minutes of being disconnected from fusion to alert you, but that would have been better then 24 hours.

 

[Valentini89]

So sorry this happened to you. Please don't give up the hobby though.

 

[cincyjim]

Very sorry to hear about this for you. I would be so distraught too. For the Apex, I've been using it for awhile now and I've always received email and text alerts when the power goes out and in most cases immediately when it happens. Do you have it connected to a UPS by chance? If so, there is a certain way you have to have it configured so you'll still get the power out alerts. Just a thought.

 

[heathlindner25]

Sorry for your losses.

 

[mcgyvr]

Dang...
Real sorry that happened..

How long was the power out for?


Not sure how a storm caused a GFCI trip either..
Thats odd...

 

[Barro777]

Sorry, dude. That is heartbreaking. Alas, nothing is eternal. Nothing a human creates lasts forever, unfortunately. Every tank without an exception will crash or get shut down at some point in the future, even if it is ever so distant.

On the bright side, I just enabled my apex heartbeat feature which, of course, was happily disabled. Thank you for posting this!

 

[vhuang168]

Sorry to hear about the losses. As mentioned, the Heartbeat feature will alert you to a disconnect from Fusion.

Always plan for failures. Even with Heartbeat, how fast can you get to the tank? Get a few battery operated air pump backups that will come on when you loose power. Should give you a few hours. A EB8 hooked up to a UPC with only a few powerheads turned on will work as well.


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[Barro777]

Whoever owns Ecotech MP-XX. Might be a good idea to make sure you've purchased and installed the battery backup that Ecotech offers for those powerheads.

 

[JVU]

I thought Heartbeat would be on by default but after reading about your heartbreaking crash, I checked my system. In going through multiple menus and help pages I found it was defaulted off, so I turned it on.

Since they heavily advertise it and pretty much everyone would want it on, it should be on by default, or at least be part of the initial setup walk-through! And while they are at it, it should be much easier to find in their menus.

I'm very sorry to hear about your loss, but at least your post is helping others.


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[chgoblknazn]

So sorry to hear about this horrible incident. That was a beautiful tank!

I need to go in to fusion and make sure heartbeat is set to alert me by default to avoid this.

 

[Spyderturbo007]

I'm sorry to hear about this. You had a beautiful tank and I'm sure will be back to where you were in no time.

For some stupid reason the Apex doesn't default with the Heartbeat functionality turned on, which blows my mind. I don't know why anyone that owned an Apex wouldn't want that functionality.

It would be like having to enable airbags in your car because they came from the factory disabled.

 

[Dummyforclownfi]

I am terribly sorry for your loss. I just watched Chasing Coral on Netflix and that had me emotional already. To see what happened to you just devastates me more. I hope that what we can get out of this is that Apex can read this thread and change the feature to be on by default.
Not sure if this is permitted by the forum but I would pitch in if there was a gofundme page.


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[ca1ore]

That sucks, always a bummer to see such things. What do you figure was the cause (you don't say where you live)? O2? Too hot?

 

[dieselkeeper]

Sorry for your losses. I have an Apex and just don't trust it to do everything correctly.

What I did to keep this from happening is I have my return pump plugged into another outlet on a different circuit breaker with it's own GFCI. My tank is on its own circuit. Pump is plugged into an outlet in the room where the tank is. If something trips the GFCI for something shorted or what ever, my return pump will still run.

 

[Joe0813]

Sorry about your tank