- So you plugged your power heads in,
set them to your corals favorite flow rate,
and they seem to be working just fine
until someone bumps the controller
and changes your perfect flow.
Your power heads starts getting so dirty
that your flow drops by 50% or more.
Your pump takes a nosedive into your sand bed
and stirs up months or years with the garbage,
or your GFCI outlet or home's breaker box
or your city power completely fails.
Your tanking corals can survive most of these
if you catch them early enough.
But in those instances, when your pumps stop working
all together, the clock begins to tick.
However, there is something that you can do to catch
these potential power head issues
the moment that they happen.
And today I'll show you how to use your Neptune Apex,
to monitor your power heads performance,
notify you immediately, if the pump
is not functioning normally,
and even improve its longevity
to save you money in the long haul.
(upbeat music)
Hi guys, Randy here at the BRS TV guide
to mastering your Neptune Apex controller,
where we show you how to use your Apex
to improve your equipment's performance
and avoid a ton of inevitable issues that all reefers face.
Today, we're talking about powerheads
and how you can use your Apex,
to keep track of their performance,
stay on top of maintenance, avoid occasional accidents
and be alerted the minute a power head fails
or the power goes out.
Do you think your corals will suffer
if they lost 50% or more flow from a powerhead
that's overdue for cleaning?
Would that prize the LPS or your favorite SPS acro survive
an increase in flow,
if your pump speed accidentally changed?
What if your power had splashed water
out of the tank occasionally, and you didn't catch it until
the stand and floors were already damaged,
which is something that happened to the BRS 160?
Is your sand bed, a ticking time bomb
that would explode if your power had stirred it up?
And I think the most important question of them all,
how would, you know, if your pumps failed completely
or the power went out?
For that matter, how would you know any of these
common scenarios were happening in the first place?
The answer is there are tools available to us
to stay on top of powerhead issues.
And today I'm gonna show you how to solve all of them
using three simple Apex functions
by activating your Apex heartbeat,
enabling power monitoring and using ORP alarms.
Along with that, we'll use leak detection sensors
to avoid damaging your stand in floors like this.
We'll also set up your power heads to avoid them
spraying water everywhere during a water change.
And I'll show you an easier way
to find that perfect flow pattern for your tank
using Apex ready power heads like gyres,
tune streams, reef octopus pumps,
and the most Apex ready powerhead of them all,
the Neptune Wave.
Now, before we do anything else,
even before adding your powerhead to your Apex,
there's one thing you must check
to ensure you get immediate notifications,
if the power were to go out.
Because having adequate flow in gas exchange
during a power outage is crucial to your tank survival.
Because we spend majority of our time away from our tanks,
either at work sleeping or out enjoying ourselves,
it's far more likely that you'll be away from your tank,
if a power outage were to happen.
This is something that we learned the hard way
on our own 750 XXL, sadly,
resulting in the loss of several fish and corals,
due to lack of water circulation, until we learned
how to solve it for good by using the Apex heartbeat,
which will notify you if your Apex loses connection
to your internet, after a period of time
indicating that your GFCI breaker box
or your entire home has lost power.
I think the Apex heartbeat is one of the most valuable
features your Apex has, because if it works one time,
you can save your entire tank investment and pets lives.
So to turn your Apex heartbeat on, choose the dropdown menu
at the top of the fusion dashboard,
either in the upper left corner of a desktop
or upper right corner on mobile,
scroll down until you see the heartbeat and choose enable
if it's not enabled already.
Because complete power failure is so mission critical.
I also highly suggest
that you test the alert
to make sure it's functioning properly,
which you can do by unplugging your Apex head unit
until you get a notification.
Next, let's talk about that pump
that has seized or failed
and catching it before it becomes a problem.
While at the same time,
reducing major changes to your flow
that could potentially harm your corals
and having a measurable pulse
on your power head maintenance routine
to not only extend the life of your pump,
but also improve the overall stability of the tank
with consistent flow day in and day out.
We're gonna add this type of monitoring protection
by setting up Apex power usage alarms,
but first let's add your power-heads to your apex outlet
by plugging it in, clicking on the gear icon
for your powerhead outlet, renaming it,
something like I've done here,
like powerhead R,
which is the powerhead on the right of my tank,
choosing advanced from the control type drop menu
and making sure your fallback and set are both on.
So you can repeat this for other powerheads as well,
but now you can use these outlets
to set up power monitoring
and solve multiple powerhead issues in one shot
through alerts.
If your pumps are slowing down or are gummed up and dirty,
they will draw less power than normal,
if somebody accidentally bumped up the controller speed
or they're out of water,
they could draw more than average power.
And more importantly, if they are off completely
either by mistake or they simply died,
they will have zero power draw altogether.
And we can solve all of these with power usage alerts.
This is another area where we'll relearn the hard way
where it wasn't until a large SPS colony
and the BRS 160 lost significant amounts of tissue
before we realized that one of the pumps
had become so gummed up,
it lost nearly all of its flow output,
which we could have caught much earlier
if we were monitoring the power output.
So to turn on that power monitoring for your powerheads,
click on the tasks icon in your dashboard,
search for the power usage alarm,
choose the outlet for your pump,
set your minimum and maximum wattage for high and low alerts
and hit send.
The Apex will recommend high and low water drain
just for you.
So you don't have to guess,
but it is best to give your powerheads
a few days to run
so you can get a better idea of their normal cycles
and then allow the Apex to provide
more accurate power alert ranges.
Let's talk about those times
when your powerhead magnet or suction cup fails,
or your pump gets bumped.
And it turns into a supercharged sand bed mixing machine
stirring up months or years worth of gunk and waste.
The reality is not everyone is as diligent as it could be
about cleaning the sand bed,
so, is there a way to know it has happened
if you aren't around to see it yourself?
For those worst examples of this,
you could use ORP monitoring and alerts
to warn you that your pump
has released the built up nasty gunk,
and to try this with just a few steps
and the probe alarm task function.
Find the probe alarm task in the menu,
choose your ORP probe,
choose a min and max RP range for alerts and push send.
You can always come back to this task
to refine those mini max ranges,
after your RP has had a few days
to measure your tanks normal or P fluctuations,
but if your power head takes a nosedive
into the dirtiest sand bed and causes a major change to ORP,
you will know.
I also mentioned earlier
that we damaged the BRS 160 stand
from Powerhead splashing water over the side of the tank,
due to it being mounted too high.
In our case, the leak was an occasional drip
over the edge of the glass,
slow enough that we didn't catch it before it was too late
and the stand was already damaged.
But poor pump placement or a super powerful pump,
isn't the only way that water can splash
outside of your tank.
And if you've ever forgot to turn off your powerheads
until they were in the middle of a water change
and they ended up spraying water all over the walls
yourself, or even worse your lights,
then this next Apex tip is for you.
I think one of the handiest things you can have your Apex do
is automatically turn unnecessary gear off
during feedings, water changes
or maintenance inside the tank
and adding your powerheads to the list of gear,
a feed mode will turn off,
will definitely save your lights from getting splashed.
To add your power heads to a feed mode,
just click the gear icon for the power head outlet
in Adeline that says If FeedD 0:00 Then OFF,
I always choose FeedD from my maintenance modes,
which you can change for yourself.
But now your pumps will be set to go off
when this is activated by default,
each of the four modes are set to run for only five minutes.
However, if that's not enough time for you,
you can tailor that default
anywhere from one to 999 minutes,
by choosing the miscellaneous set up wrench icon
from your dashboard
and adjusting your feed mode time in seconds.
So saving your stand and floors from damage
is important to you,
which it likely is for a majority of reefers,
you can add even more protection
using the Neptune LDK leak detection kit
to catch splashing water that isn't so obvious.
Just place your leak sensors from the kid,
near the edges of your stand or underneath the carpet,
plug them into the FMM module
and follow a few LDK task function steps
to set up automatic alerts.
If they detect water on the floor,
which is not only simple,
but could save you from heavy repair costs in the long run.
Speaking of making things simpler,
how easy was it or difficult was it
for you to pick a flow mode
or program a schedule for your powerheads?
Did you just run them at one speed all day every day?
Or do you seek out powerheads
that allow you to vary the flow in your tank?
If you have Apex ready pumps with zero to 10 volt control,
there are some hidden gems inside the Apex
that you can use to make this process a whole lot easier.
With your Apex ready,
powerhead hooked into your variable speed outlet
on your Apex head unit or VDM module.
You can use the variable speed outlet
to access a graph like wizard
that allows you to change up your flow,
multiple times throughout the day.
Or if you'd like to have somebody else do the work for you,
you can browse the library of schemes
that fellow Apex reefers have shared
by accessing the download scheme icon
at the top of the wizard
and searching for one that fits your tank.
It's also important
to point out the copy feature in the wizard
where instead of having to manually configure a second
or third pump schedule,
you can simply copy a pump that you already said
and just save it to the others.
Of course, you can take your powerhead control
to that next level with the Neptune Wave,
which not only has its own library of shared schemes
and ability to choose multiple flow points
throughout the day,
but the wave also has seven advanced flow mode types
that vary the flow pattern for you
and you mix and match them for your tank needs.
Along with that,
because the wave can immediately detect
when it's out of water and shut itself off,
you can skip that feed mode maintenance tip
that we set up earlier
and also avoid having
to remember to turn the wave outlet off
when it comes time to clean them,
because they simply won't run when they're out of water.
I think this is a super valuable feature
that makes the wave one of the smartest powerheads
you can add to your Apex,
but as we are learning throughout this master
your Apex series,
the real benefit of the Apex specific accessories
are the additional monitoring alerts
that you get with them connected.
The wave specifically
not only has the same safety and protection
and alerts that we added earlier,
but they also include alerts for internal temp,
voltage ,install errors
that will notify you of the symptoms of a pump failure
before it happens and turn itself off.
One of the best examples of Apex additional safety measures,
It was in our auto top off episode
with the Neptune ATK
and that sweet little trick that I shared
for an ATO reservoir on autopilot
that fills itself without having to lift a finger,
which you should check out right over here,
or you can catch the entire master,
your Neptune Apex series in this playlist right over here.