- So, your favorite heater or heaters are working great
and doing their job,
so much so that you probably haven't given them
a second thought as to what happens if things go wrong.
However, what does happen
if your heaters temp probe isn't submerged?
For that matter,
where the heck is the temp probe
on a heater like this anyway?
What do you do if your sump runs dry
and your heater isn't submerged at all?
Will your heater be enough to keep up
if your home's furnace goes out?
Or worse yet,
will it overheat your tank if your AC gives out?
Our heaters are one of the only critical pieces
of life support gear in our tanks
that powers up and down
upwards of 1400 times a day
or a half a million times a year.
Regardless of how long your heater's been working for you
by just acknowledging that it has a limited life span
and being prepared if and when
that lifespan comes to an end,
you can help ensure that your tank
won't have a limited lifespan as well.
In today's "Master Your Neptune Apex" episode,
I'll show you how to be prepared for the inevitable
and make sure that none of these heater issues
will be your problem
because the Apex can help you catch them early,
notify you immediately, and solve many of them for you.
(upbeat music)
Hey guys, Randy here with the BRStv guide
to mastering your Neptune Apex controller,
where we show you how to use the Apex
to improve your equipment's performance
and avoid a ton of inevitable issues
that all of us reefers face.
An overheated or under heated tank
is one of the most talked about issues that reefers face
because it's a silent killer,
that many times is difficult to tell
just by looking at the tank where everything's going great
until the moment that it's not.
Today's all about those heater protections and safeguards,
how to solve obvious and not so obvious heater issues,
and a few tips to protect your tank
and your home's heating and cooling appliances
from temperature failures, even if you're dead asleep.
Early in my reefing hobby I was just like most reefers
who tossed the heater in the sump that fit my space,
fit my budget and fit my tank,
to maintain as close to 78 degrees as possible.
Once it was working as intended,
I really never gave it another thought.
Just blindly trusted
that it would keep doing its job without fail.
What I didn't consider
was what would happen to your tank
if the AC or furnace went out,
like somebody shut it off or opened a window,
or what would happen
if your heater stopped working altogether,
or worse yet, and got stuck on,
and how long would it take
before you notice either one of those?
What if somebody bumped or mess with the controls?
What if the internal components wore out
and it wasn't accurate anymore?
What if a little temperature probe came out of the water?
What if your heater became exposed in the sump?
Would it melt the sump, destroy the heater,
or even leach contaminants like copper
back into the tank,
or worst of all,
could a malfunctioning or damaged heater destroy my home?
Instead of waiting for the inevitable to happen today,
I'll walk you through using the Apex
to not just anticipate and avoid over
or under heating your tank,
but also how to avoid
a myriad of potential other heater issues
that have always lingered in the back of our minds
but we've never really actively done something about,
even some potential issues
that you almost certainly haven't thought of before.
Before we get started setting up
our Apex heater protections,
if you've seen our top 20 heater mistakes video,
you'll know that we recommend using two medium-sized heaters
for redundancy that each, on their own,
are capable of maintaining 75% of your target tank temp.
You can check out that episode
to dive into the reasoning behind our recommendation,
but the next steps will assume that you followed our advice
and get right to the Apex heater task function
to maintain your tank temp
within a super stable half a degree window.
After your heater's plugged into your EB832 outlet,
click on the task clipboard icon
in the top of your dashboard,
search for the heater task or scroll until you find it,
choose the outlet, rename it something easy like Heater1
select your temp probe,
and set your min and max temp range for control.
The Apex will set your default min
and max temp range to 78 and 79,
but for even tighter stability,
I like to set my maximum temperature to 78.5 degrees.
Meaning if the tank temp falls below 78,
the heater will turn on,
and when it rises above 78.5, it will turn off.
Now to back this up and add redundancy,
just set your heater two degrees higher
than your Apex outlet,
and if for some reason, your Apex were to fail,
the heater's own thermostat would trigger
and turn the heater off.
It is pretty rare event that the Apex will functionally fail
and more likely an accidental issue that we caused,
like the Apex temp probe got pulled out of the tank
and is not submerged,
or that we accidentally toggled the heater outlet on.
But with the heater backing up the Apex,
your tank is protected.
Another quick note here,
although it is possible to adjust that min and max window
to as little as a 10th of a degree,
it's best to resist the temptation
because turning your gear on and off five times more
puts unnecessary wear on the internal components
of both the Apex and your heater.
You can follow that exact same process
for your second redundant heater
trusting that if one of your heaters ever failed,
and since they're only capable of 75% of your target temp,
the backup heater would be able to keep
some heat in the tank
rather than the tank temp dropping too low.
However, the real value
is knowing that something's out of whack in the first place
as soon as possible
which we will tackle next by setting up temp probe alarms.
To set up your 10 probe alarms,
search for, or find the probe alarm task function,
choose your temp probe,
and choose your min and max temp for alerts.
If your tank falls outside of those ranges,
I like to tighten those default alarm ranges
closer to my actual target tank temp range
with the minimum set to 77 and the max to 79,
which sends you an email, text, or notification
if your Apex outlet is stuck on
and you're now relying on
that heater thermostat backup itself.
I also suggest using the Apex temp swing graphs or logging
to hone those temp alerts in
for your own tank's normal ranges.
A temperature probe alarm is the most useful
and beneficial protection you can set up for your tank
because it will not only tell you
when there's an issue actively happening
but more importantly,
you can use them to help troubleshoot
the cause of the issue,
like if you accidentally toggled that heater outlet on,
or if your Apex temp probe came out of the water,
or if it's another piece of gear altogether.
You could also use the temp alarms as your Canary
for your home's heating and cooling appliances,
which I'll touch on in more detail a bit later.
But now, once you get a high or low temp alarm,
you can act quickly
to manually toggle the outlets on or off,
or to solve the issue
with the Apex automatically doing the work for you
with temperature controlled actions.
Because we use the heater task function
to set up the min and max temperature control
for your heater outlets,
you don't need to worry about adding
any additional lines to them,
but if you want it to automatically have a fan or chiller
turn on to cool down your tank if it Rose above your alarm,
you could add in a line like I did for my fan outlet
that says If Tmp > 80.0 Then ON.
Once the tank falls below 80 degrees,
the fan'll turn off again.
I think this type of on-off control really shines
when you apply it to emergency notifications.
Because the tank temperature
is so mission critical to your tank,
instead of just the temp alert to your phone or email,
you could set up a super loud radio or siren to activate
when the temperatures have climbed higher than normal,
which is a sure way to wake you up
in the event of emergency,
eliminate the chances
that you miss a temp alarm notifications,
or decrease the possibility that you wake up to a disaster.
Following that same mindset of
the more alerts and notifications, the better,
we can use power monitoring as an additional way
to alert you when your heater's not functioning properly.
With power monitoring active for your heater outlets,
you will get an alert
if your Apex tells the heater to be on
and the heater doesn't respond or draw power.
To set up power monitoring,
just find the power usage alarm task,
choose your heater outlet,
and choose your low and high wattage draw levels.
Let's discuss the temperature probe calibration
in the list of Apex task functions
and how it can be a problem solver as well.
We've conducted multiple BRStv Investigates heater tests
and have come to find that most heaters on the market
can't be trusted to read accurately.
Meaning that setting them to 78 degrees
doesn't always mean that they'll actually reach 78 degrees
but oftentimes a few degrees higher
or a few degrees lower than that.
Since many heaters available to us
also don't have onboard calibration options,
sometimes the only way
that you can account for this inaccuracy is to test them
with a trusted temperature probe
and set the heater higher or lower
to account the difference.
Now, I'll be the first to tell you
that the Apex can't solve this for you directly,
but because the Apex temp probe is calibratable
and more trustworthy than your $30 heater,
you can use it as a tool to help compensate
for any heater's deficiency
and trust that the Apex alerts, notifications,
and actions based on temperature are accurate
and far more reliable.
To calibrate your temp probe accurately
using the temp probe calibration task function,
pick up a Hanna thermometer
or NIST certified thermometer like these
or take the average of two to three kitchen thermometers,
and enter the temp into the Apex task function and hit send,
and your Apex is now calibrated to the correct temp.
Outside of the Apex task functions
to protect against heater related issues,
I've got three additional Apex accessories and add-ons
that we can also implement
to help put heater-related worries to bed.
Those being an optical sensor
to turn your heater off before it gets exposed to air,
a PM1 or PM2 module for additional temp probes
to monitor the tank or the ambient room temp
and a magnetic probe rack,
which is far safer and more reliable
than letting your probe dangle in the sump.
I think it's pretty clear
how keeping your Apex temp probe securely submerged
is far better than letting it hang free in the sump,
especially when the cord gets pulled accidentally
and exposes the temp probe,
which is something that almost certainly
will happen at some point,
and likely more times than one, if you don't secure it.
So, that's the benefit of installing your temp probe
into the magnetic probe rack with the threaded screw.
But what's not as clear to most reefers
is what a second temp probe can do
to add safety and redundancy
by monitoring your display tank and sump separately
in case they were disconnected from a failed return pump
or by monitoring your tanks true temperature regulator,
your home's AC, or furnace.
What happens if your return pump stops working,
which means your display tank has become separated
from its life support equipment in the sump?
Your temp probe and heater might tell you
it's functioning normally inside the sump
while your tanks tempt slowly drops.
What about if somebody in the house
turns your AC or furnace off or opens a window,
letting in hot or cold air?
All of these are something
that you can catch and solve immediately
with another temperature probe added to your Apex.
Whether you use a PM1 or PM2 module
to add your second temp probe,
you can set up alerts and notifications
just like we did for our main temp probe,
using probe alarm tasks, with the goal in mind
of what your second probe is measuring.
In the probe alarm task function,
you'll see your main probe as base_Temp
And your second probe will show as something different
like mine does here.
If you're using one in your sump and one in your display,
I would recommend setting the probe alarm minimum
and maximum ranges to the same 77 and 79.
However, if you plan to monitor the temperature of your room
you might consider adjusting them slightly higher or lower,
depending on what you want to be alerted to.
For ambient room temp,
I recommend notifications for temps under 65 degrees
and over 75 degrees,
which you can adjust to your needs,
but serves as a strong indication
that either something is wrong
with your heating and cooling appliances
or if they are off when they shouldn't be.
Because an exposed heater is the fastest path
to catastrophic failure,
using an optical sensor can save your tank
and home from damage
by automatically turning your heater outlets off
if a low water level is detected.
So, to add this Apex protection to your tool kit,
you can install an optical sensor
to an FMM module on its own
or to your leak detection kit, flow monitoring kit,
or auto top-off kit if you already have them,
then add in a new line to your heater outlet
that says if optic three open, then off.
Your sensor name will probably look different
if you didn't rename them beforehand,
which I did by pulling down the four sensors
from my FMM to my dashboard and renaming them
according to which port they were plugged into,
such as Leak1, Leak2, Optic3, and Flow 4.
However, just like your return pump
I showed you how to protect in the previous video,
Your heater will now turn off
if your sump water level falls below critical depths
before the heater hits the air.
This isn't the first time that we found a super helpful use
for these Apex optical sensors.
Actually, in this return pump "Master Your Apex" video here,
they saved our floors and our pumps
from catastrophic damage.
I highly recommend seeing how that went down for yourself
or binge watch all of
the "Master Your Neptune Apex" series over here
to see the other tips, tricks, and hacks
that you can do with your Apex.