Apex warning (and tank emergency)

[MnFish1]

Update. Tank is doing well. Don’t have any parameters. No bleaching of corals the 4 remaining fish are ok

 

[MnFish1]

i have seen this in a very rare occasion where eb4 or eb8 has a trip breaker that needs to be pushed back in due to surge. it dont really trip properly and causes just enough to show leds but no power to outlets. try unplugging the eb8 and place it back in wall outlet and reset the push breaker on the eb8 itself. i hope it fixes it.

Yeah I will check for that at home. What is really odd is that I got no alerts from apex about the temperature drop or the ph drop.

 

[Amoo]

i don't know if it would have mattered here or not, you could have had a dirty power event (from the company not your house lines) that caused a mini flash of electronics...etc. There are a number of things that could have happened. It could have just bricked for all we know. I do know I actually do a power reset on my Apex monthly as part of my "maintenance" to my overall system.

 

[Dr. Reef]

for apex not to alert of changes in tank i am suspecting either its bricked or stuck. sometimes electronics specially connected to internet have certain ports they use to communicate and due to surge or even sometime for unknown reason those ports get stuck and stop communicating and thus giving you impression everything is ok but its only displaying last data it received while its trying to connect in background. Usually does not come out of it unless physically unplugged and reset.

in some real rare harsh situations one will have to reset the device along with router and internet modem etc the whole nine yards.... starting from the source.

 

[Amoo]

What @Dr. Reef explain is the reason I do a power reset monthly. I just din't put it as clearly as he did. You could honestly make a case for doing it weekly or every time you change filter socks...etc.

 

[MnFish1]

for apex not to alert of changes in tank i am suspecting either its bricked or stuck. sometimes electronics specially connected to internet have certain ports they use to communicate and due to surge or even sometime for unknown reason those ports get stuck and stop communicating and thus giving you impression everything is ok but its only displaying last data it received while its trying to connect in background. Usually does not come out of it unless physically unplugged and reset.

in some real rare harsh situations one will have to reset the device along with router and internet modem etc the whole nine yards.... starting from the source.

The funny thing is that the graph and monitoring continued to function. Ie when I opened fusion from my hotel it said temperature 71. So the apex itself couldn’t have been bricked completely. Also the ph and conductivity dropped and rose as expected. This leads me to think it’s a problem with the energy bar itself. Also when my house sitter unplugged the apex/energy bar i got an immediate heartbeat message that apex was disconnected from fusion

 

[MnFish1]

What @Dr. Reef explain is the reason I do a power reset monthly. I just din't put it as clearly as he did. You could honestly make a case for doing it weekly or every time you change filter socks...etc.

Can you explain what you mean by power reset. Do you mean the reset button on the apex or I plugging it. Thanks

 

[Amoo]

Did you have a low temp warning setup by chance? I would assume not but am curious if you didn't get an alarm other then no power, that you wre supposed to.

 

[Amoo]

Can you explain what you mean by power reset. Do you mean the reset button on the apex or I plugging it. Thanks

I physically pull the power cable on my apex for 10 seconds once a month, not the reset button, sorry should have been clear as both are options.

 

[MnFish1]

Did you have a low temp warning setup by chance? I would assume not but am curious if you didn't get an alarm other then no power, that you wre supposed to.

Yes I had a low temp warning set. And I only got the heartbeat message when the house sitter unplugged the apex herself while we were on the phone. I didn’t have a low power message set up only the heartbeat power warninf

 

[Amoo]

That sounds to me like you could have two, possibly connected issues. Your Apex was reading but not doing anything and may have needed a reset to start working right again. At the same time your EB8 stopped relaying power to the sockets. Almost similar to a cascading type failure. I wonder if you had a brown out style event possibly. It really is hard to tell.

 

[MnFish1]

That sounds to me like you could have two, possibly connected issues. Your Apex was reading but not doing anything and may have needed a reset to start working right again. At the same time your EB8 stopped relaying power to the sockets. Almost similar to a cascading type failure. I wonder if you had a brown out style event possibly. It really is hard to tell.

Yeah but wouldn’t you expect the lights on the apex to show an alert? When she checked everything was orange. It will be interesting to see when I plug it in again when I get home. The interesting thing is I had my housesitter plug the apex and eb back in and though all the lighta seemed right there was still no power

 

[Amoo]

Yeah but wouldn’t you expect the lights on the apex to show an alert? When she checked everything was orange. It will be interesting to see when I plug it in again when I get home. The interesting thing is I had my housesitter plug the apex and eb back in and though all the lighta seemed right there was still no power

Not necessarily. It's hard to know how things are inter-connected inside the brain. Just as an example, when I had issues with my conductivity probe the first thing they had me do was restart my Apex. It immediately started reading differently then it had been....

So while the processing side of the house may have been relaying the numbers through to the visual display it may have not been going any further and actually triggering alarm alerts. I'm honestly not sure how much of that is done onboard and how much is done on the cloud side.

The only thing I do know is turning off and back on is their step 1 and does seem to fix a lot of things. Whether it's software or hardware related is hard to know, I just know with my unit that has been my personal experience. (Keep in mind my unit is a sample size of 1)

 

[Waynerock]

It's no problem man.

Small sidebar. I had to make an emergency trip out of town today as I told you via PM and I was able to have dinner with my mom on the way back through Gainesville (her home area). She has a pet Monkey and the only vet she takes him to is in Orlando. Even UF and the few vets in that area that handle exotics won't touch a monkey. She was telling me how one of her biggest sources of information is groups with other monkey keepers.

I wanted to tell that story, because at the end of the day, that's what we're all doing here. We're all here sharing information and all trying to contribute in the best way we know how. I think we all know how stressful it is when you're miles away from home and your tank is having issues. I honestly believe there aren't many long term members in this hobby who don't care deeply about the things in their tanks. This hobby is expensive and time consuming and when you're watching or hearing about it unfold from miles away it's very difficult to even think straight let alone conjure a rational thought or plan moving forward.

Sounds like things are back on track for you. I'll be interested to hear what happened with the EB8, even if it's via PM down the road.

Your mom has a monkey!! Awesome mom and awesome pet.

 

[MnFish1]

Not necessarily. It's hard to know how things are inter-connected inside the brain. Just as an example, when I had issues with my conductivity probe the first thing they had me do was restart my Apex. It immediately started reading differently then it had been....

So while the processing side of the house may have been relaying the numbers through to the visual display it may have not been going any further and actually triggering alarm alerts. I'm honestly not sure how much of that is done onboard and how much is done on the cloud side.

The only thing I do know is turning off and back on is their step 1 and does seem to fix a lot of things. Whether it's software or hardware related is hard to know, I just know with my unit that has been my personal experience. (Keep in mind my unit is a sample size of 1)

Just so it’s clear I wasn’t looking at the display on the apex. I was looking on the internet. Fusion

 

[Amoo]

Just so it’s clear I wasn’t looking at the display on the apex. I was looking on the internet. Fusion

Yes, what I am saying is the Apex is receiving and passing the data, but appears to have not been doing any of the associated functions with that data.

To try to make it simple and not too nerdy, it was reading, but not comprehending and acting.

 

[TeotheCoral]

SO - I have had a tank with an apex set up for 3 years. Have a generator (natural gas) Left on vacation yesterday - No alerts from apex. Get a call from the house sitter - the water in the tank seems 'cold'. She failed to mention that none of the pumps or lights were working. Eventually got those details out of her. Needless to say there was power to the apex and ebb, the outlet was working there was no power outage (i.e. none of the clocks were reset in the rest of the house). Fusion was connected. No firmware was updated. Nothing was touched on the apex. Looking at the lights on the apex - all of the lights were the correct colors - including on the EBB. All of the connections were tight.

Needless to say - the temp in the tank was down to 71, there were 2 dead fish (gold flake angel and an anther). Plugging the equipment into a regular outlet (ie removing the equipment from the Apex Energy Bar) And plugging all of the equipment into a new surge suppressor resulted in all of the equipment turning on and working correctly. It seems that the Energy bar failed somehow - but the apex thought everything was ok.

This has also been reported on the Neptune systems board. Why do these things always happen when you're on vacation...?

Im assuming I will be coming home to dead SPS and probably more dead fish. I have relied less and less on my apex controller - using it only to plug things into and monitor the tank (ph, temp, etc) - I let the lights and max gyre run with their own equipment rather than rely on the apex modules. This is the third Apex failure I've had - never again.

Edited to clarify that the changing from the energy bar to a surge suppressor plugged into the same outlet left all the equipment working. Unplugging the apex and ebb and resetting and again trying to plug anything into the ebb resulted in no power to that device despite it being listed is on I. Fusion. I left all the equipment on the surge suppressor without the apex and everything is workibg

I’d
Like to know how big are your dead fish? I’m in the mood for some fish taco. Bad humor, I’m worried my own apex controller.

 

[MnFish1]

I’d
Like to know how big are your dead fish? I’m in the mood for some fish taco. Bad humor, I’m worried my own apex controller.

The gold flake angel was about 4 inches the anthia was about 2 inches.

 

[TeotheCoral]

That’s huge. Sorry for your loss brother

 

[vetteguy53081]

Sorry to hear. I would asap contact Apex support on measures to reset ir diagnose the power bar. Could be the eb8 itself or brain having no communication to the bar.

There is a reset on both components which i believe you start with power bar first then press reset on brain and move forward after lights are green