- So your protein skimmers working great and doing its job,
but then the pump fails or needs maintenance.
The skimmer cup overflows,
it's running but not collecting anything,
it's leaking or spilling outside the sump.
It's stripping away that coral food
or bacteria additive you just added.
And the list goes on.
All of these are a hundred percent avoidable
and today I'll not only show you
how to solve these potential skimmer issues and more,
but using a Neptune apex.
You'll see how it just a few minutes of time
and a handful of quick apex tasks.
Your protein skimmer can be a better tool
beyond filtration alone,
and can actually make your tank safer and more successful.
Hi guys, Randy here with the BRS TV guide
to mastering your Neptune apex controller,
where we show you how to use the apex
to improve your equipment's performance
and avoid inevitable failures,
because ignoring the inevitable,
puts you on the inevitable path.
Today we're talking protein skimmers,
and how to use the apex to improve its performance.
Increase safety, protect from failures,
make maintenance much easier,
and actually save you some money along the way.
I'll show you how to tackle the most common skimmer issues
that afflict almost every single reefer at some point,
but more importantly,
you'll see how easy it is to set up a handful of apex alerts
and tasks to avoid them all in the first place.
And in the end, I've got a hack that you can use,
so your skimmer cup will never overflow again,
no matter what.
I counted about a dozen potential skimmer issues
that we're gonna solve today with the apex,
maybe even a couple of you might not have thought
were issues to begin with,
let alone know that you could solve them,
starting with the most common and easiest to fix problem
that reefers face within some skimmers.
And that is stopping them from overflowing and spewing,
nasty fish poo and waste.
When your return pump is off
and the water level in the sump rises,
which often creates more maintenance tasks
like water changes.
I say this is the easiest to solve,
because this layer of protection
is automatically built into the task functions
for setting up a skimmer from the beginning,
by walking through the initial six step process
to add your skimmer,
you actually solve three things at once.
First, you name your skimmer outlet,
so it's easier to ID.
Second, your skimmer is tied to your return pump.
So if your return is off, your skimmer is off as well.
And third, it creates a five minute
or longer delay before the skimmer power's back on,
which allows for your sump level to return to normal.
With all three of these covered,
you basically eliminate any chance that you overflow
your skimmer cup again, during water changes,
maintenance or after the occasional power outage.
The next easiest thing we can do with the apex
is help protect our skimmer investment
through immediate alerts and notifications
for when it might need maintenance.
When the pump or venturi air intake might be clogged,
or even if the pumps failed completely.
Again, a simple tasks function
solves all three of these potential issues
through monitoring your skimmer pumps power
or wattage draw, which can actually alert you,
if the pump is not working as intended,
such as it's drawing zero or near zero power,
meaning it's completely dead or nearly there.
Something often overlooked
is that the skimmer is clogged with buildup
and can actually draw less power than normal
telling you that it needs maintenance
or your skimmer can draw more power than usual.
If your venturi is blocked or clogged,
meaning less air into your skimmer
and diminish performance.
Set up these skimmer protections,
we find the power usage alarm tests,
select your skimmer outlet and pick a minimum and maximum
wattage draw that will send you an alert when the skimmer
operates outside of those ranges,
the easiest way to do this is,
is let the apex select the ranges for you,
which it does automatically based on the last 24 hours
of power usage history,
you can come back and run the task again
to make adjustments.
That's really all there is to it.
We've just set up power monitoring for our skimmer,
which not only applies if you have an Insam skimmer,
but for those with an external recirculating skimmer,
you can also apply this to your secondary feed pump
for the same protection and monitoring.
While we're on the subject of protecting our investments
and ultimately saving money longterm.
Let's talk about those coral foods.
Amino acids, additives or bacteria
that many of us choose to dose our tanks.
Not only do those foods and additives cost money,
but we also want to maximize their effectiveness
in the tank.
However, with the skimmer running
and potentially pulling them out,
we need a solution to turn the skimmer off
for just a few minutes.
This is where the apex feed modes come in handy
and setting one up to turn our skimmer off
for 15 minutes while dosing,
is as easy as clicking the cog wheel icon
in the skimmer outlet, adding in the line,
if feed a 15 then off above the defer statement
and hitting the send button.
If 15 minutes doesn't work for you,
or you want a different feed mode
for coral feeding or dosing,
you can choose feed mode A through D
or change the length of time the skimmer is off
anywhere from one to 999 minutes.
It's as simple as that.
So I don't know if you've been keeping track,
but I've already counted at least six super common headaches
that we've prevented with the apex
by just using three basic set of features,
but there's even more out there that we can solve.
Not only through the use of alerts,
but by actually having the apex do something about them.
When we're not around the tank to do it ourselves,
let's find out what those are by tapping into a few
of the apex ad-ons or accessories.
So I think we can all agree that a reefers worst nightmare
is water on the floor when you don't expect it,
whether it's an overflowing skimmer cup,
that's spilled over the sump
or an external skimmer plumbed outside the tank,
knowing that water is not where it should be.
The moment that it happens is a hundred percent better
than discovering it later after potential damage.
The apex fix for this potentially devastating issue
is the Neptune LDK or leak detection kit,
and the quick six step task function
for adding it to your toolbox of prevention.
Once you plugged in your FMM module
and placed your leak sensors
in spots where a potential leak might occur,
all you need to do is run the LDK task.
Choose your FMM.
Choose two sensors in ports one and two, and hit send.
Not only will you now get notified
when the sensors trigger from water on the floor,
we can actually take this to the next level by automatically
doing something about it.
By telling our skimmer to shut off,
if a leak is detected,
potentially stopping further leaking
until you can get there and fix the issue.
To make this happen,
all you need to do is click the skimmer outlet cog icon,
and add in a new line of text above the
for me and the current name of my sensor.
That line reads.
If my sensor name closed then off.
Your sensor name might be a slightly different,
but the key is to tell your skimmer
that if your sensor is closed, turn yourself off,
which is something that you can copy and paste
with any leak sensor you've added.
Here's a tip for you.
If you want to make the sensors even easier to identify
before adding them to the skimmer outlet,
I highly suggest you rename them first
to something that makes more sense.
To do that, just click the tiles icon from your dashboard.
Find the four new switches created when you added the FMM,
bring them down to the dashboard and rename them something
like I've done here with leak one, leak two,
optic three, flow four.
Now I know exactly what type of sensors
plugged into which respective FMM import
making them easier to ID and easier to use.
So now when I add them to my skimmer outlet,
I can just write if leak one closed then off just like that.
Not only did we solve potential skimmer leaks,
but for majority of reefers,
now we've covered over 80% of the potential skimmer issues
that you might ever encounter,
but there's still a handful of issues
that you might be leaving on the table,
depending on your setup.
Things like preventing an overflowing skim eight receptacle
dialing in an optimal flow rate
for your recirculating feed pump
monitoring a controlling ACO two scrubber
and related tank pH, using ORP monitoring.
To know if your skimmer is doing its job.
And don't forget that skimmer hack that I promised earlier
to completely stop your skimmer from overflowing ever again.
Let's talk about using optical sensors with the FMM ports
to help solve your skimmer from overflowing
in higher than normal sump levels
or using them to alert you
when your skimming collector reservoirs full,
ready to be cleaned,
as well as shutting off your skimmer
from filling up that reservoir even more.
Regardless of what you're using your optical sensors for.
First thing we want to solve,
is to shut off your skimmer,
when your optical sensor is triggered
from a high water level or full skimming reservoir,
in which case we follow the same process we did
for the leak detection sensor.
Only this time,
I'm adding a line above the defer statement that says,
if optic three closed then off.
Again, optic three is what I named my sensor
and yours might be different, but don't forget.
We also want to be notified when the sensor is triggered,
which is as simple as clicking the cog icon
above your email outlet
and adding in the line that says
if optic three closed then on.
Now when the sensors trigger,
your skimmer will turn off and your alert will turn on.
Meaning you will get push notifications
in the apex fusion app or email
or a text straight to your phone.
For those of you using a flow sensor
on your recirculating skimmer feed line, or feed pump,
getting alerted when your flow is below
or above, your target is even easier
because all you need to do is plug the sensor
into the FMM port,
find the flow sensor task function,
and the apex will walk you through seven steps
to choose the size of the meter you installed
and choose a minimum and maximum flow rate
that will notify you when your skimmer pump
falls outside of those ranges.
The next few skimmer problems solvers
don't necessarily need programming to set up
or to implement,
but by using them in monitoring pH or ORP,
coupled with some alerts,
they can help provide you with a window
into your skimmers performance
and help troubleshoot or eliminate your skimmer
as a potential tank issue.
The first one is using pH monitoring and alerts.
Specifically, if you choose to run a CO2 scrubber
with your skimmer to control your tank pH
whereby using a low or high pH alarm,
you can tell when you're CO2 (indistinct) is depleted,
it needs change.
Or if something terrible went wrong with your skimmer
causing pH to spike,
you could shut off your skimmer completely.
Setting up a high low pH alarm
is a simple five step task function called probe alarm,
where you can choose your pH probe set to a low parameter,
like 7.8 or 7.9 and a high parameter like 8.5,
and it's done.
If I want to turn my skimmer off,
when the pH does wind up that high,
you can simply add a line into your skimmer outlet
above the defer statement that says
if pH greater than symbol 8.5 then off.
In relation to that using ORP as a touchpoint
for skimmer performance,
if your skimmer is functioning, but maybe tuned poorly,
or was bumped or changed somehow
where it's not really removing anything,
if left long enough organics could begin to build up
in the tank
and related ORP could see a trend downward with it.
In this case,
you can walk through the same probe alarm task
and set your ORP probe alerts
when your tank drifts outside of normal ranges,
normal ranges are automatically populated for you
in choosing your ORP probe alarm.
So it's best to give your probe some time to determine
what they are before setting them up.
So far just by adding a protein skimmer to the apex.
We've reduced potential floor damage from leaks
increase the longevity in life of our skimmer pump
stopped nasty skimmage spillage
and dialed in our skimmer performance.
While at the same time added numerous layers
of monitoring and redundancy
that made our protein skimmer
better than it was before on its own,
as well as made it safer for our home and tank.
But there's one sure-fire trick to stop skimmer overflowing
once and for all that I refuse to skip
when setting up a skimmer on my apex
and that's by installing a float switch in the lid
to turn my skimmer off when the cup is full
and tell me it's time to empty it.
In most cases, using a float switch with your skimmer
will require a little DIY to drill the skimmer lid
and install the vertical float switch of your choice.
But once you've got that done,
you can install the switch into a Neptune breakout box.
And you're ready to go.
To add the switch to your skimmer and alerts.
You can find the switch in your unused tiles
here my floats which is number one in my breakout box,
which is SW one tile I've pulled down to my dashboard.
Now you can rename the switch.
Something like I did like skim full,
save it and head to your protein skimmer alert
to add in the line above the defer statement
that says if skim full closed, then off.
Depending on the float switch that you use for your skimmer.
When it's in the down position,
it might be either open or closed.
If it is, you can either turn the float over
so that it's closed when up
or just go adjust the skimmer outlet line
that we added accordingly.
Now much like the optical sensor alerts
and alarms we previously added.
If you want your apex to send you a notification,
when the cup is full and needs to be emptied,
you can simply add in another line into that email outlet
that reads if skim full closed then on.
This function enabled,
you'll probably never overflow your skimmer again.
And actually might be more aware when it's time to be clean,
which is something that I find super valuable
every time I use it
much like these other super valuable tips for return pumps
that we cover in this next episode, over here,
or all the valuable tips in the full mastering,
your Neptune apex series playlist, right over here.