- If you're looking to make your water changes
all around easier and less prone to issues.
From your mixing station to
draining and filling your tank
or even completely automating both;
than this video is for you because today
we've got a bunch of tricks and ideas
to set up your Neptune Apex
to handle the bulk of your water change work for you.
(upbeat music playing).
Hey guys, Randy here, with the BRStv Guide
to master your Neptune Apex Controller.
Where it's all about improving your gears performance
and avoiding all those inevitable reefing issues
that happen to nearly everyone.
And today it's water changes.
Love them or hate them,
after today you'll learn how to use your Apex
to completely automate the entire water change process.
All the way down to your salt water mixing station
and make the whole thing a little smarter,
a bit safer and a whole lot easier.
We're gonna do this in two stages.
First, by making your salt water mixing stations
smarter and safer with an
auto refilling mixing bin when it runs empty.
A push button option for those times
that you need to heat and mix the water in advance.
And save your home from leaks
with a solenoid water control
and optical sensors and leak sensors.
Secondly, we're going to automate
the water changes themselves
to remove all the work using the Neptune DOS.
Automated meaning either
small daily water changes throughout the week
or a fixed water change
where you simply walk up and push a button
to perform your water change when
you feel like your tank needs it.
No more hauling around buckets,
hoses or pumps because the Neptune DOS
is going to do it all for you.
And at the end, I've got 10 super helpful tips
to make sure your DOS does this accurately
and consistently day in and day out.
So, diving right in with your salt water mixing station,
we're gonna double down on leak protection
for your home beyond a simple
mechanical flow valve like this,
by adding in a leak detection kit with leak sensors,
optical sensors and a Neptune solenoid
that will shut off the flow of water
if a leak ever happens and send you a text or notification.
And on top of that, using optical sensors
both for empty and full mixing bin alerts.
As well as, use them to tell your bin
to fill itself back up automatically
without you having to lift a finger.
All of that starts by setting up the leak sensors first
with the LDK and FMM.
So, if your mixing station isn't near
your tank or your Apex,
just daisy chain a few of these Aquabus Extension Cables
to get you there and connect your FMM.
Now you can plug the leak sensors into port one and two,
place them on the floor near your mixing bin
or leak prone areas
and also plug your optical sensors
into port three and four
and mount them inside your mixing bin.
One a few inches off the bottom
and the other just below your float valve.
With the sensors attached,
drag them down from the unused tiles
on the fusion dashboard
and rename them for their intended purpose
like I did with LEAK1, LEAK2, LOWRES and HIGHRES.
Now find the LDK task function.
Choose your FMM,
choose your leak sensors in port one and two
and hit send.
That takes care of the leak alerts and notifications.
And next, we'll set up the optical sensors.
First thing to do with the high and low optical sensors is
to set them up to alert you when they are triggered
by clicking that gear icon above your email outlet
and add in a couple of lines that say
"If LOWRES OPEN Then ON" and
"If HIGHRES CLOSED Then ON."
Just remember that after setting this up
you will continue to get alerts
that either the bin is full or empty,
which is going to help you remember
to turn your auto water change DOS off
when the bin is empty
and then remind you to turn it back on
after you've mixed up your new batch of salt water.
All right, so now we've protected against leaks
and set up alerts for empty and full bins
but let's really turn this thing into
a smart mixing bin with a Neptune solenoid.
After installing the solenoid on your water feed line
and plugging it and a power supply into your FMM,
you can find the one link outlet from your unused tiles
that showed up when you added the FMM.
Pull it down to the dashboard and
rename it something like MIXING BIN,
then choose advanced for the control
and add in a few lines that say "Fallback OFF",
"If LOWRES OPEN Then ON",
"If HIGHRES CLOSED Then OFF"
and "If LEAK1 CLOSED Then OFF."
There's now two things
these lines will do for your mixing bin.
One, is that if a leak were ever detected
the solenoid would completely shut off
the flow of water automatically.
And the second, is that your bin will automatically
begin refilling itself once it runs empty,
saving you a bunch of hassle of flipping valves
or remembering to turn on and off the water.
Here's another tip for you
using the auto refilling bin setup.
If you ever felt like refilling your bin
before it hit that low level sensor,
all you'd need to do is restart the solenoid outlet
by toggling the slider to off for five minutes
and then toggling it back to auto
to start filling up again.
Just remember to turn
your auto water change DOS outlets off
while you're filling and mixing new saltwater
and then flip them both back on to auto
when you're ready to go.
Now, I also mentioned earlier that you can set up your bin
to start heating and mixing with the push of a button
when you're ready to make a new batch.
And sure, you could just flip a power strip on
with your heater and mixing pump plugged in.
But today we're talking about making water changes easier.
And this is one, another area that you can do just that
by simply hitting a feed boat on your Apex
before you go to bed and have the water heated
and circulated and ready to go when you wake up.
This one does require a few extra pieces of gear
with an Energy Bar PM1 Module and a TMP Probe but
I would just use an Energy Bar 4
at over half the cost of a full EB832.
So once you have all three of these connected to your Apex
and your heater and mixing pump plugged in,
find the new tiles for your energy bar outlets
and TMP probe graph in the unused tile bin,
drag them down to the dashboard and
rename them something easy like I did,
"MIXING HEATER" and "MIXING PUMP,"
as well as renaming the mixing station TMP Probe
by clicking on the TMP graph gear icon
and naming it "MIXTMP."
Now find the heater task function,
choose your mixing heater outlet,
choose the mix TMP probe
and set the min and max to 78 and 78.5, then push send.
To set the entire thing up to a push button feed mode,
just add a single line to both the heater and
the mixing pump outlets that say
"If FeedC 000 Then ON."
You can add this at the bottom
of your heater outlet lines
and for the mixing pump,
just make sure that the fallback
and set are both off
and add the line below.
You'll also wanna extend the feed mode runtime
beyond the default five minutes,
to something that's long enough to
bring your water up to TMP
and the trick to do that is
to find the miscellaneous gear icon
and change the time anywhere from
up to a maximum of 18 hours.
Alright, now on to stage two
of using your Apex to make water changes a whole lot easier.
Which is all about the Neptune DOS.
Before we get into those
top 10 helpful tips I promised earlier,
let's quickly go over the difference between
the DOS Automatic and DOS Manual Task Functions.
And how to know which one is the right tool for you.
The DOS Manual Water Change is simple.
Push a feed mode button, do a water change.
You can change up to 31 gallons
in a single 24 hour period.
Which probably fits a lot of tanks needs for general upkeep.
And you certainly could use more than one DOS
to double that amount.
But the biggest takeaway from the DOS Manual Water Change
is if you like to change your water on Saturdays
just push the feed mode in the morning
and the DOS will do the rest.
On the other hand, is the DOS Automatic Water Change.
Which will change a small portion of your water every day.
Making it more of a set and forget type option
that essentially allows you to change
a higher percentage of your tank water
over the course of a week if needed.
Mathematically, the automatic option is less efficient
since it does remove a small percentage
of the water it changed the day before,
but for me small daily changes is the
approach I prefer for two reasons.
One, I know I'm likely to forget
the push button from time to time.
And two, I can schedule my daily water change
to happen during the time I'm typically not home,
meaning I'm less likely to hear the DOSing pump running.
Regardless, whichever one of these two tasks speaks to you,
let's walk through the task functions for both,
then get to those top 10 tips.
Starting with the DOS Automatic
Water Change Task Function first.
Hookup your DOS to the tank
and reservoir as shown in the diagram.
Rename the DOS heads for adding water in
and taking water out.
Choose the amount of water you wanna change daily
and during what time.
For example, I wanna change 20%
of my 100 gallon tank each week.
That means I'd need to change about
three gallons per day,
then push send.
Setting up the DOS Manual Task Function is just as simple
although you will choose which
feed mode you'll use to activate a water change,
which for me is feed mode B.
Then choose how many gallons you want to change
in a full 24 hour period
up to a maximum of 31 gallons.
There is a bonus here.
You can choose the LOWRES optical sensor
in your mixing station to automatically
shut the DOS off when the reservoir is low,
in case it happens in the middle of
your manual water change.
So that's really all there is
to getting your DOS set up for auto water changes.
But I have a handful of helpful tips for you to consider
before we close this one out.
First, use dosing line holders or
the Neptune Magnetic Probe Rack
to keep your dirty tank water tube
submerged near the bottom of your sump
and your clean water tube
just under water enough
to keep it from building up salt creep.
Second, you could use a rig, like we do,
with quarter inch push connect fittings and acrylic tubing
so you don't have to worry
about the lines curling under water.
Third, use darker colored quarter inch
RODI tubing for all the lines,
which not only makes rounding corners
and extending tubing much easier
with push connect fittings
but also avoids algae and gunk
from growing inside the lines
from ambient light.
Just make sure to install the RODI tubing
snugly onto the dosing head
to keep it from drawing air.
Tip number four is to mount your DOS
in a place that you won't hear it,
like next to your mixing bin,
or maybe even a crawlspace
which you can easily reach
with some aquabus extension cables.
Number five, if possible always try to run
your dirty water tube down a drain
or use a drain saddle clamp on your sink plumbing
so you don't have to worry about maintaining
or overfilling a dirty water bin.
Six, separate the drain and the fill line from each other
so it's not counterproductive.
Neptune suggests drawing dirty water from
the skimmer chamber and adding clean water
to the return chamber.
Tip seven, monitor salinity
and set up salinity probe alerts
to stay on top of upward or downward trends.
Because catching more pronounced trends
might mean that your auto water change lines are clogged,
kinked or even got pulled out of the water,
or that your reservoir might be empty.
Tip number eight, prime your lines
before you calibrate your DOS
and calibrate your DOS before starting
your auto water change schedule.
Which leads me to that next tip
that I recently learned how to do.
Tip number nine,
and I wouldn't say that this is a must do tip
but it will save you a couple of extra steps
when it comes to priming or calibrating the lines.
The DOS water change task functions
set your dirty water dosing head to run counter-clockwise.
However, when you push the button
on the dose to prime the lines
or when you run the dose calibration tests,
that same dosing head runs clockwise.
You can change the direction of your head,
if you'd like, in order to make
the calibration and priming easier
instead of physically swapping the lines
to do so by doing this.
Connect your dirty water lines backwards
from what the diagram shows,
meaning the left side will draw from your tank
and the right side will go out to the drain.
Then run the DOS water change task function normally.
After it's done, click on the gear icon
for the right side dosing head
which I renamed DOS Remove,
choose modify interval
and change the action from "remove" to "add."
This will change the direction
of your dosing head to clockwise rotations,
just the same as it runs for priming and for calibration.
Tip number 10, and this one's a bit self-serving,
but if you found a few gems
or nuggets of info in today's video,
you really should check out the full
Master Your Neptune Apex Playlist over here.
I guarantee there's a hidden gem in each one.
Like the trick I show you for your ATO reservoir that
never runs dry again in this episode right here.
So, check it out.