Apex Neptune Ease of set up/controllability???

[Emma01]

Hi.
Anyone here experience with the Apex Neptune monitor/controller?
Will be getting one for my aquarium, and wanting to know ease of set up and controllability?

For example will a 2nd heater kick in if the second stops working for some reason, which happened to me few weeks ago..... noticed my babies (tank inhabitants) were very sluggish, looked at temp........ holy crap was coming up with error message. Temperature probe was showing 19.0c, thank god I was home to be able to sort out !!!
ALWAYS have back up for back up for back up equipment!
My babies were fine btw

 

[gilman]

The Apex can do virtually anything you tell it to do . You can most certainly write it to use one heater as an emergency back up , thats what I do with mine .

This forum will be your best friend . I highly suggest reading up on set up and how to program it for the way you want your heaters to run .

https://forum.neptunesystems.com/

 

[Emma01]

The Apex can do virtually anything you tell it to do . You can most certainly write it to use one heater as an emergency back up , thats what I do with mine .

This forum will be your best friend . I highly suggest reading up on set up and how to program it for the way you want your heaters to run .

https://forum.neptunesystems.com/

Oh fab, I’m gonna read this forum in depth! Thanks for that :)

 

[gilman]

Np emma01 . Also if you know someone else with an apex you can link to each others and they can help you with programming. Im linked to a bunch of my friends and we all program each others

 

[Emma01]

Np emma01 . Also if you know someone else with an apex you can link to each others and they can help you with programming. Im linked to a bunch of my friends and we all program each others

Oh that’s cool!

 

[Muttley000]

I noticed you listed the temperature in Celsius, if you are in a part of the world that does not use 120vAC that can be a problem. I too have found my Apex to be very helpful and it makes it easier to monitor my tank when life gets really busy. Basic programming is done easily with the wizards and the place you have already been directed covers everything else.

 

[Emma01]

Does the apex not give readings in Celsius?
Thanks

 

[Muttley000]

Does the apex not give readings in Celsius?
Thanks

Oh sorry, that is not the issue at all. It is that if you are in Europe the unit can not be plugged in the wall. This has been a big complaint that the new energy bar isn't made for European voltages yet.

 

[Emma01]

Oh sorry, that is not the issue at all. It is that if you are in Europe the unit can not be plugged in the wall. This has been a big complaint that the new energy bar isn't made for European voltages yet.

Oh, well I didn’t know that ;Nailbiting that’s no good!

 

[garbled]

There is a different version of the energy bar for europe I think, that will work. I think the problem is just that the newest EB832 isn't compatible with european outlets. Check on the forum and the Neptune site, because this is just what I've seen, I've not researched it.

As for a multiple heater setup, yes, you can do exactly what you are asking. I have a setup that runs 3 heaters. During the day, 1 heater is primary, the other is it's backup. During the night, they reverse roles. This keeps wear on them even. Finally, there is a third backup heater, that can kick in if the other 2 need help or fail. If you go look at my build thread, I posted the code for that setup in "day 7".

 

[Tastee]

I take a different approach to my backup heater as I want to protect against the Apex having problems too. My approach is different control systems backing each other up.

My main heater is plugged into my EB6 (I am in Australia) and Apex controlled to turn on < 25.0C and off > 25.2C. That heater’s thermostat is set to ~25.5 so it will turn off then if the Apex fails and keeps it on. Apex email alert is set to send > 26.8C.

My backup heater is intentionally not plugged into the EB6 but into mains power. It’s thermostat is set to turn on ~24.6C. This way if the Apex fails completely the backup will still work. My Apex alarm will be sent at 24.8C so would alert me to a main heater failure and I would then see continued alerts if I also had a backup failure. I do test the backup heater every couple of months to ensure it is still working. At this point I need all three to fail to give me a problem I don’t detect, and even in this case Apex Fusion should tell me my Apex is off the air.

My chiller is powered by the EB6 but controlled by it’s own internal thermostat (not an Apex controllable chiller). It’s thermostat is set to ~26C at which point it turns on. In practice I find according to the Apex temperature probe it turns on at 26.5C and off at 25.3C. It is programmed in Apex to turn off < 24.8C and on > 25.0C. This is redundancy in case the Chiller fails and won’t turn off itself.