Are you using your Neptune Apex like THIS?? Top 20 Neptune Apex Mistakes!

[randyBRS]

Okay. I know not all of you have an Apex on your tank, but for those who do or are considering getting one down the road...YOU NEED TO SEE THIS!

We've compiled a list of Top 20 Neptune Apex mistakes that absolutely would have saved us from disaster if we knew about them or used them sooner! (750XXL comes to mind here. )

 

[Brasileiro561]

Not a mistake but an improvement. Place a piece of paper towel under you leak detection probe. It’ll cover a bigger area. That paper towel will suck up the water and activate the probe. Had my ato reservoir over fill one time and the only dry place was where the probe was ‍ Smh

 

[User1]

Not a mistake but an improvement. Place a piece of paper towel under you leak detection probe. It’ll cover a bigger area. That paper towel will suck up the water and activate the probe. Had my ato reservoir over fill one time and the only dry place was where the probe was ‍ Smh

That is actually a brilliant idea. Just saying.

 

[User1]

@randyBRS great job. I believe the couple of these I've seen so far are well worth people's time. 30 minutes isn't bad and there is usually one or two nuggets worth the time. Not saying there isn't more but usually one or two stand out.

This one is no different and I'm guilty of one. That is the heaters. I let the Energy bar manage the on/off and I've known for a while this isn't correct. In fact it is so incorrect that it would be a failure to launch if I was trying to reach low earth orbit... I've been putting this off for a while now trying to catch a pair of the 300 Watt BRS heaters in stock (Trident level difficulty catching those bloody things in stock!!!!).

In any case a great video. Keep up the good work and hope all is well.

 

[mal7887]

Great video with great tips. I've used the Apex for many years now and am very pleased. I think a lot of people tend to overthink it in the beginning and can get very overwhelmed quickly. The setup can be as easy or as complicated as you make it. I see people trying to reinvent the wheel with advanced coding sometimes when really it's not necessary and sometimes is as simple as following the task setup.

Keep it simple! ... and as listed in number 14, always test and observe any changes you make to ensure everything behaves as you intended it to!

 

[fftfk]

Speaking of heating a tank and trying to reinvent the wheel...I’m trying to figure out a way for my apex to control a radiant heat pump. I’d like to use a heat exchanger with my boiler to heat the tank. Does anyone know if this has been done before?

 

[Brasileiro561]

Speaking of heating a tank and trying to reinvent the wheel...I’m trying to figure out a way for my apex to control a radiant heat pump. I’d like to use a heat exchanger with my boiler to heat the tank. Does anyone know if this has been done before?

Yes. There is a few ppl in r2r doing that. I don’t know if they are controlling it with apex but I know they are using heat exchanger to heat up their tank

 

[Mikeltee]

This is a great sales pitch. I'm pretty sure 95% of us bought the Apex knowingly and intending to do all this stuff before we even hit Place Order. I have had mine since reefing day 1 11 years ago. I am a software engineer so I thrive on redundancy and controlling every aspect. I have the Classic, and other than individual power monitoring ports and the Trident, I think one would be crazy not to pick up a used Classic on ebay for $200 vs getting the new one for $1000. I have had 7 in production Apexs and 2 backups over the last 11 years. The only thing that has ever gone out was a display. These things are subjected to the harshest environments... bravo to the Neptune crew for putting out such a revolutionary product for us reefers, keeping it fresh and updated, listening to the community and adding features and hardware that we request, and providing EXCELLENT customer service. They will even remote into your pc and set things up for you if you need them to.

 

[Nhltc99]

Speaking of heating a tank and trying to reinvent the wheel...I’m trying to figure out a way for my apex to control a radiant heat pump. I’d like to use a heat exchanger with my boiler to heat the tank. Does anyone know if this has been done before?

Check out Terrence from Neptune's build thread. I believe he is pumping hot water through PEX pipe in his sump to heat the tank water. This is a fairly recent addition to his tank, so check the last couple of pages.

 

[JVU]

Overall very helpful, thank you!

I disagree with your emphatic statement that the absolute right way to control your heater (#16) is to have the primary control be the non-Apex controller, with Apex as backup. With my 2 heaters, I do the opposite (Apex as primary, InkBird as secondary) for 2 reasons that are important to me that have to do with Apex power monitoring and dashboard convenience:

1. I want to be alerted immediately when either one of the 2 heaters fails off. Since I use 2 heaters each of which is able to barely keep up with heat needs, if 1 heater failed I may not notice for quite a while, but this would leave me in jeopardy of an underpowered heating system and/or if the second one fails I’m back to a complete failure. The way to do this with Apex power monitoring is to have the Apex be the primary control, so that when Apex tells a heater to turn on but not enough power draws, I get an alert.

2. I want to be able to know in Apex if 1 or both heaters are on, both in the dashboard, and in the graphs, along with associated power draws. If they were both on all the time because they weren’t the primary controller, this would be lost.

3. I feel like the Apex temp hardware is more accurate and more reliable than a secondary controller would be, including the temp probe, electronics, and outlet switches, and therefore is better used as the primary. I reserved the secondary controller as the failsafe.

4. The way I get around the numerous on/off cycles you cautioned people against is by staggering the on/off temps of each of the 2 heaters by 0.2 degree and using a 0.5 degree hysteresis, so that heater 1 is on most of the time (except in the Summer when both are mostly off), and heater 2 is off most of the time (except sometimes in the winter when both are needed). There is relatively little on/off switching each day with stable tank temps. Heater1 turns on at < 77.5, off at > 78.0. Heater2 turns on <77.3, off at > 77.8. This also makes Heater2 and its InkBird much less likely to fail since it isn’t used very often.