Justifying Cost of Neptune Controller

[shaginwagon13]

Originally Posted by jerpa

Absolutely not. Ranco Temperature Controller. Something that was built specifically for, and only for, controlling one of the most important parameters in your system.

I'd rather have my heater on a controller than nothing at all but IMO the Ranco is a more important purchase.

+1

I have 3 Ranco's in my system and they are the best. They are all hooked up to my Profilux but with safety's coded into the controller in case one of them malfunctions but to date I have never had a problem with any of them.

[mc-cro]

same here Ranco controller for the heaters.

today is a perfect example of my love/hate relationship with the APEX.

I had a thunderstorm last night, knocked out power to the house. when the power came back on today, my EB4 is flashing my lights on an off and just clicking away, burning up my halides. and the main unit refuses to be accessed remotely, not from my LAN, not from outside access, not from telnet, nothing at all. When I access it from the base unit, everything shows up fine.

I have been jacking around with it for about 6hrs now. I shudder to think what would happen if it had been controlling something important.

[Fishbulb2]

Originally Posted by mc-cro

same here Ranco controller for the heaters.

today is a perfect example of my love/hate relationship with the APEX.

I had a thunderstorm last night, knocked out power to the house. when the power came back on today, my EB4 is flashing my lights on an off and just clicking away, burning up my halides. and the main unit refuses to be accessed remotely, not from my LAN, not from outside access, not from telnet, nothing at all. When I access it from the base unit, everything shows up fine.

I have been jacking around with it for about 6hrs now. I shudder to think what would happen if it had been controlling something important.

Sorry to hear that, sounds frustrating. I've never heard of something like that happening, but out of curiosity, why wouldn't the defer or max change commands be used to prevent the cycling? I'd love to know why that happened (to prevent it personally). Please post here or PM when you find out what went wrong.

FB


PS. Although hey guys, there are at least a couple threads here on RC with Ranco failures. So nothing is actually 100% failsafe.

[RicGio]

Originally Posted by jerpa

Absolutely not. Ranco Temperature Controller. Something that was built specifically for, and only for, controlling one of the most important parameters in your system.

I'd rather have my heater on a controller than nothing at all but IMO the Ranco is a more important purchase.

Yup, Got a Ranco controlling my chiller AND heaters. I set the chiller and heater thermostats at 78 and 80 respectively and set the ranco at 80 and 78 respectively. Cost me 80$.

A simple float switch set up with latching relays will shut off my pump if sump level drops. Cost me 25$.

Lighting is off of 2 walmart heavy duty timers. Cost me $35.

Granted I can't impress my friends by turning off the lights with my cell phone But then again it only cost me $140!

[Fishbulb2]

Originally Posted by RicGio

But then again it only cost me $140!

I think that's a fine way to go about it, but again, that's actually quite a bit more than what a Reefkeeper Lite Basic sells for nowadays.

You could have gotten all that plus more for less money and in a neater package.

FB

[RicGio]

Originally Posted by Fishbulb2

I think that's a fine way to go about it, but again, that's actually quite a bit more than what a Reefkeeper Lite Basic sells for nowadays.

You could have gotten all that plus more for less money and in a neater package.

FB

Yeah, but if one portion of the controller fails I have to toss the whole thing. This way I can only replace what's broken.

[Fishbulb2]

Originally Posted by RicGio

Yeah, but if one portion of the controller fails I have to toss the whole thing. This way I can only replace what's broken.

Fair enough. I guess you could also have purchased things slowly along the way. I think this might be a personal preference. To each his own in this regard.


I guess my only point is, from a cost savings perspective, I think it's impossible to justify the Apex (which I own). But the smaller more basic controllers have come down so far in price, that they can make a lot of sense financially if someone wants to got that route.

[dwolson2]

Here is something I haven't seen on the thread yet, if you run a kalk reactor through your ATO, the apex can shut it off when the ph rises too much. I have had 3 overdoses of kalk, first one snow globed my tank(note using APEX jr) second two were on the full apex, with no ill effects(because the PH shut down my ato)

Also, I like all the float switches you can put out. Its an expensive monitor that can make a few things easier on you. Cost effective, maybe, depends on your livestock. Controllers have saved mine and others tanks many times, others if they had one would have been saved. I also like the idea of rancho on the apex, I really like redundancy.

If i were you I would get the apex lite. I bought the full apex, and at the end of the day was thinking of getting the ai, so a lite plus a vdm would have been about the same price, but now since i have the full I have to buy the vdm which means another 100$ However, now I can control 8 different colors of DIY LEDs as well as a pair of AI sol blues.

And yes you can get the cloud and lighting on the ai through the apex.
Also you get a couple more ecotech modes too with the wxm.

Don't get the apex jr though, you will probably want to upgrade within the year(like I did)