Apex killed sps on vacation

[quantim0]

Just wanted to put this out as a warning to anyone with an apex.

I was on vacation last week and while I was gone my apex froze up and killed 95% of my sps. It froze on Tuesday afternoon with all my lights and heater on and stayed stuck until the power cut out briefly on Saturday night and reset the unit. Nothing went to fallback, no data was recorded, no alerts sent, it just froze. I was unable to log in through my phone, but I was on a cruise and chalked that up to the shoddy wifi on the boat.

I have my heater set to turn off at 81 manually and the controller keeps it at 79. So the heater shut itself off, but the tank still rose to 87. Every sps I had bleached and was either dead or dying. At this point I have lost about 95% of my frags and colonies which is well over $1k that I've spent.

The controller was only purchased in August, so it's not exactly an old unit. I don't know what to do, I just updated to the newest firmware and I can't trust the unit at the moment. I bought the unit specifically to avoid things like this and the apex caused the problem it's supposed to prevent for $500+.

[hkgar]

Have you contacted Neptune about what happened? They might take more responsibility then that which they are required do do under the warranty.

I am sure many would want to see there response.

I have an Apex and have read a lot about the controller and this the first I have heard of something like this happening.

[sirreal63]

I am truly sorry to hear that, and though it's no consolation, you are not the first and I doubt you will be the last. I too would be interested in Neptune's response.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2383922

[triggreef]

That sucks. I'm going on vacation soon for the first time in 3 years and I'm panicking about my tanks. lol I use apex to run just about everything on 3 separate tanks. If something like this happened as much as I am into this hobby I'd really be on the fence about calling it a day.

[FullBoreReefer]

Faulty heater if you say its thermostat is set to 81 and the tank went to 87. After a heater turns off the tank should never over shoot by more than maybe 2 degrees at most. If the temp is what you think killed everything off I would blame the heater not the apex. Although it sucks that the apex froze up, thats why we need battery back ups for pumps etc...

Although I am truely sorry...

[quantim0]

Originally Posted by FullBoreReefer

Faulty heater if you say its thermostat is set to 81 and the tank went to 87. After a heater turns off the tank should never over shoot by more than maybe 2 degrees at most. If the temp is what you think killed everything off I would blame the heater not the apex. Although it sucks that the apex froze up, thats why we need battery back ups for pumps etc...

The heater must have turned off by itself, otherwise the tank would be a heck of a lot warmer than 87 with the heater running for 4 days straight.

The heat came from running 8 t5 for all that time and my fans don't come on to control temp until the tank gets to 81. According to my temp log the apex froze with the temp at 79.4.

[Spar]

Originally Posted by FullBoreReefer

Faulty heater if you say its thermostat is set to 81 and the tank went to 87. After a heater turns off the tank should never over shoot by more than maybe 2 degrees at most. If the temp is what you think killed everything off I would blame the heater not the apex. Although it sucks that the apex froze up, thats why we need battery back ups for pumps etc...

Although I am truely sorry...

im thinking the lights staying on probably had more to do with it. pretty tough on sps to endure that much consistent light.

[FullBoreReefer]

Originally Posted by quantim0

The heater must have turned off by itself, otherwise the tank would be a heck of a lot warmer than 87 with the heater running for 4 days straight.

The heat came from running 8 t5 for all that time and my fans don't come on to control temp until the tank gets to 81. According to my temp log the apex froze with the temp at 79.4.

Originally Posted by Spar

im thinking the lights staying on probably had more to do with it. pretty tough on sps to endure that much consistent light.

Never thought about that. Good point.

Again, im very sorry. Like some have said, if it happened to me I may lose reef keeping as one of my hobbies out of frustration. Or come back bigger and better...

[quantim0]

Originally Posted by sirreal63

I am truly sorry to hear that, and though it's no consolation, you are not the first and I doubt you will be the last. I too would be interested in Neptune's response.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2383922

I have seen your thoughts on this before and had the "it will never happen to me" mentality. But everyone needs to be prepared to have this happen when you trust technology too much.

I will contact Neptune sometime soon, but all I'm expecting to hear is that they're sorry and that's the end of their responsibility.

[snorvich]

If you are going to restart, I suggest profilux as the controller of choice. Not trying to be nasty, as I am sorry for your loss.

[coverdog]

Sorry to hear you lost every thing. I have read about a few other people having problems with the software update as well. I'm not upgrading mine as they say, "if it's not broke don't fix it". The new software has nothing I need at the moment.

My lights have their own timer I run them off and have the apex set up as always ON unless temps go to 82 so if the apex flakes out my lights will still shut down with the timer. Sometimes technology hurts.

[MarksReef]

Man, I'm sorry to hear that.
I use an Apex too as MANY of us do.
I hope you can at least figure out what happened and share it with us, if there is anything we can avoid or you in the future.

[quantim0]

Originally Posted by snorvich

If you are going to restart, I suggest profilux as the controller of choice. Not trying to be nasty, as I am sorry for your loss.

I am not going on vacation again until Christmas so I'll be able to catch it if it happens again.

However I will seriously look into that controller as a replacement before I'm gone again.

[hkgar]

The reality of this type of problem occurring does not significantly change by buying one brand over another, nothing against Profilux, but I would be surprised if it never happened with them.

Many of the technology parts - chips, boards, etc - are purchased form supplier companies and 1 small variance in the production of those parts can cause a problem when it fails. Apex no doubt writes the software that makes the controller work, but software should run forever, if properly written (that is what beta testing is to help determine). The problem was most likely a hardware error that caused the programs to stop runnig.

[snorvich]

Originally Posted by hkgar

The reality of this type of problem occurring does not significantly change by buying one brand over another, nothing against Profilux, but I would be surprised if it never happened with them.

Perhaps yes, perhaps no. As an exercise, google "apex controller problems" and "profilux controller problems"

[hkgar]

Originally Posted by snorvich

Perhaps yes, perhaps no. As an exercise, google "apex controller problems" and "profilux controller problems"

Significant diference in hits
Neptune 1.1M
Apex 5.9M
Profilux 169.0K

I would discount the Apex number somewhat as there are several types of Apex controllers such as this URL I found among the Apex hits

http://www.salesforce.com/us/develop...controller.htm
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/744/p/228276/2548244.aspx
http://www.turbo-mopar.com/forums/sh...pex-controller

Profilux may very well be less prone to problems. Ratio of problems to number in use would be meaningful.

[snorvich]

And of course the Profilux number should be likewise discounted for similar reasons. Having been in the business of building systems with embedded systems software, I can assure you there is a difference in hardware and software creation among various suppliers, and certainly unit testing, system testing, and application testing can have different levels of rigor and quality management. What we were doing was regulated with oversight so there was no choice in managing quality. Aquarium controller software is a couple of orders of magnitude less rigorous if for no other reason than the size of the market. Since my embedded livestock base is of reasonably high cost, I went with Profilux (x2) despite the ostensibly higher cost. On the other hand, if one of my controllers failed and I lost livestock, GHL would be no more forthcoming than Neptune.

[HECS]

As another apex user, I would love to know the response you get, please confront them and please post the response.
Very sorry to hear of your loss

[snorvich]

Originally Posted by HECS

As another apex user, I would love to know the response you get, please confront them and please post the response.
Very sorry to hear of your loss

It is highly unlikely that they can or will do anything. Maybe fix it for free?

[ReachTheSky]

Very sorry to hear that. I hope the corals that survived can pull through.

Funny - I had the EXACT same problem with my Apex. I got it and set it up, then a month later everything went absolutely haywire and the unit itself was frozen stiff solid. A power cycle fixed it. Then it happened again. Thankfully I was home both times and caught it before any significant damage to livestock or equipment occurred. I contacted Neptune and they quickly telnetted into my Apex and fixed the issue. I continued to use the Apex for about a year and a half afterward and had no problems with it.

[Stackemdeep]

My condolences for your losses. Terrible news. I was considering getting an apex or another controller but your story is all I needed to read.

[crazyfish]

Even though u run a controller I would still advise that u have someone to check on things every few days. Extra measures of security are never a bad thing. Sorry to hear about your loss.

[Hudzon]

The problem is you ignored the fact that you could not reach the device and blamed it on the ships wifi. At the point you can not reach the device you contact someone else and ask them.

If you leave a reef tank without a backup to call in an emergency that is a risk you know you are taking.

Could you of had a power fluctuation of some kind that could of caused it?

[dkeller_nc]

Yeah, an experienced human (a fellow reefer) beats any machine any day.

But I've a suggestion if you re-start your reef. It's always good to back the controller (any controller) with additional safeties. The well-known one is using a heater with a thermostat, set higher than the controller's upper temp cutoff.

But other items that aren't supposed to stay on should use similar back-up. An example for halides or T5HO fixtures without integrated controllers is to use a timer plugged into the aquarium controller. Similar to the heater situation, set the timer for a wider photo cycle than the controller's limits, but not 24 hrs/day.

Another item are dosing pumps. If they're "dumb" pumps run by the controller, then the total amount of solution that the pumps can dose to the tank should be limited, preferably to no more than 10 days worth of tank consumption.

Finally, the best ATO situation is to use a dedicated system like the Tunze that's plugged into the aquarium controller. The ATO senses level and turns the top-off pump on/off, and the aquarium controller allows additional safeties such as leak detection and/or delayed start in case of power outage. Even with this redundancy, it's best to limit the amount of RODI in the ATO reservoir to no more than 1/10th of the system volume.

[crvz]

My apex failed in the past, but I was due to my power source (I use my Apex with DC8s, so I had to supply a 12V power source to power the apex) and effectively shut down my system. Certainly not the issue of leaving everything in it's current state, that is a scary problem. Sorry to hear about this, hope you get into better situations moving forward.