The Rise and Fall of Vertex Aquaristik

[Reef Builders]

There was a time in the early 2010s when Vertex Aquaristik had an outsize influence on the reef aquarium hobby – their skimmers, reactors and a growing catalog of other reef aquarium goods were the brand to have. Fast forward to our current decade and Vertex products are no longer found in stores, and it seems […]
Source

Continue reading...

 

[Abhishek]

Extremely well written @Jake Adams . Sad but true !

 

[Da8]

IMO vertex Omega 180 was the best Skimmer I've ever used.

Fair priced, best materials and great performance.

Sorry to read this article.

 

[hart24601]

It was sad to see them close. The somatic line had, in my opinion, the best value to performance ratio of any skimmers out there.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Solid article, Jake

 

[kouma]

Anyone want to buy a Cerebra controller? I am one of the suckers who bought one

 

[Billldg]

Great article.

 

[JoshH]

A really good read, it's a shame to see a company that makes such solid and quality products disappear. It does make you wonder as Jake suggests, if they had have just stopped with the first iteration of the Cerebra and stuck to there well know and quality product lines, if they would still be around.

 

[robbyg]

These problems usually hit companies that are owned and run by a person that is always looking for the next big project. It's kind of like gear junky syndrome except they want to create something new and once done have very little interest in it and quickly want to move onto something bigger. Elon Musk is a prime example of this. He is always looking for something new and can never be satisfied with what he already has in R&D. Luckily he also hires some pretty good talent and has a real knack for inspiring them to make his ideas work and then sell.

Vertex should have easily been able to build a controller but they probably could not set a goal line and just get to it. Instead I suspect the owner wanted more and more features and in the end it just got so complicated that they could not fix the bugs.

 

[reefwiser]

They lived products made by other companies.

 

[robbyg]

They lived products made by other companies.

Huh?

 

[Cdeg]

Huh?

Yes... true

 

[bobanh]

Is anyone interested in trying to salvage these controllers? There is lots of good hardware and software in it. I'm looking into doing exactly that. Just starting so I have no idea where would that lead.
I just bought some used multi-bars and power-bars and one head unit for next to nothing. It looks like gen1 and gen 2 bars. Does anyone have, what was at the time, the latest .iso file for controller head firmware?

 

[Wingizzmo]

Is anyone interested in trying to salvage these controllers? There is lots of good hardware and software in it. I'm looking into doing exactly that. Just starting so I have no idea where would that lead.
I just bought some used multi-bars and power-bars and one head unit for next to nothing. It looks like gen1 and gen 2 bars. Does anyone have, what was at the time, the latest .iso file for controller head firmware?

When Jason was going **** up he had a bunch of us waiting in line for the new controller and had us send in our old computer boards before shipping the new units that never shipped I had 2 of them . I still have the rest of the parts power bars and such.

 

[robbyg]

Is anyone interested in trying to salvage these controllers? There is lots of good hardware and software in it. I'm looking into doing exactly that. Just starting so I have no idea where would that lead.
I just bought some used multi-bars and power-bars and one head unit for next to nothing. It looks like gen1 and gen 2 bars. Does anyone have, what was at the time, the latest .iso file for controller head firmware?

It is pointless without the source code. If someone could get their hands on that then there would be a good chance of someone fixing the bugs.