Neptune APEX Reliability (Shocking in my experience!)

[shent69]

I don't trust any controller. The bottom line is that any controller is a single point of failure.

For redundancy, I have both GHL and APEX controllers on my tank. I like the Apex fusion dashboard graphs a lot better than GHL connect. However, I trust and like the GHL features better. So I use the APEX to monitor parameters and to control my back up equipment, i.e., heater and pumps. GHL is my main controller for equipment and lights. Having two controllers also helps with understanding if probes are getting out of calibrations.

I have had some issues with my APEX that I lost trust in their products. Especially when I had more than 7 modules hooked up, it drove lots of random restarts until I unplugged some to get back under 7 modules. This week my dos stuck on when fusion said it was off, luckily it was my premade saltwater that the Dos was pumping into the tank. I was lucky, and I caught it in time to unplugged it, or I would have water everywhere. I have not had any issue with APEX customer support as they respond quickly to any request I put in. However, that doesn't fix the fact that I have had 3 failures in a year and a half. I have also used GHL support they respond quickly also.

 

[ZaneTer]

People seem to forget that Apex/GHL/whatever is nothing more than hobby grade equipment. No matter how it gets dressed up or marketed this is the simple truth. There are other options out there but don’t expect them to be anywhere near as cheap.

FWIW I use a custom Siemens PLC. The thing is almost indestructible but it was manufactured for heavy industrial applications.

 

[TheHarold]

I was keying on the "systemic problem - in the beginning" bit.

As far as trust - point taken. I know a few good stories about this after talking to a few F111 and B1 pilots. TFR is a interesting beast. Then again so are the lads who flew on the Apollo mission. Talking about trust. Lots of stories about Nixon's other speach.

Ahh, TFRs. I may or may not have flown into one on my second solo, and gotten a jet scrambled. Luckily my instructor was the one that did (or rather, did most of) the preflight, lol.

 

[PurpleMonsterSlayer]

I completely agree with thier lack of reliability. Two weeks after I purchased mine it quit working. It took a week just to get an answer back from them whether they were going to replace it because they would only talk through emails. Finally got a replacement unit that was scratched and broken. That one failed after Two days of use. Took them another week to agree to replace it. And the third one came scratched and broken as well. And what I mean about broken is the base unit has a lock on it for when it’s mounted in a cabinet the lock was broken so the base unit with swing up or down without staying put. This really wasn’t a problem and made it easy to unplug cables or plug new cables in but still less than two months and three base units I decided to trash everything Neptune product I had except for the wave pumps. Because they grow algae on it that my tangs and snails like to eat. My ATK was completely unreliable and had to daily reset it for it to work properly. The base unit always lost connection to the internet even if it was hardwired to the base unit. The core 20 pump did it’s own thing. By this I mean it would ramp up to 100% then down to 10% when ever it felt like it And sometimes just quit working altogether. It seems every time I went on vacation my tank crashed because of Neptune products.
1st time the atk did top of the sump came home to heater burning a hole in the bottom of the sump stand and my wood flooring. It was a good thing I still had at home left.
2nd time came home to zero flow in the tank wav pumps and core 20 stoped working every thing in the tank dead and a horrible case of cyno (1”think on everything)
3rd time came back to no flow in the tank and water all over the floor.
I guess you can say third times a charm I will never buy any Neptune product or recommend any Neptune product.

 

[Thales]

You're not getting my point - The title of the OP - Neptune apex reliability - (shocking in my experience) and he asked for comments. I agree with you - angry people post more than happy people - And - this isnt designed to be a scientific study - right? For my part - I gave my experience (positive as well as negative) - All of the problems that I have seen on the website - and discussed by the company have been resolved. My comment reflected reliability of not just Neptune - I would be worried about the reliability of anything to control my tank automatically

Gotcha, you are talking about something different from what I am talking about.

 

[ca1ore]

Anyway, on a semi-related note, a controller “failure” shouldn’t crash a tank if set up properly.

If my apex failed, it would be mightily inconvenient, but it would not crash the tank.

 

[DJF]

Apex is junk- i am in the midst of switching to ghl and wish I had started with it- yeah it may be more expensive out of the gate but way, way cheaper in the long run- I have not had to buy anything twice- I’ve had to replace wavs, a dos, pmups and atk modules, and I had a cor20 leak voltage into my tank (the last straw). The Alexa service and fusion are a bright spot in an otherwise plastic piece of poop. I tell everyone who listens including Neptune support (back when I had reoccurring support calls with them... don’t miss that)- I’m not fully converted but I keep adding things to my apex graveyard... interesting coincidence how many things go bad right after upgrading firmware- buyer beware.

 

[User1]

Apex is junk- i am in the midst of switching to ghl and wish I had started with it- yeah it may be more expensive out of the gate but way, way cheaper in the long run- I have not had to buy anything twice- I’ve had to replace wavs, a dos, pmups and atk modules, and I had a cor20 leak voltage into my tank (the last straw). The Alexa service and fusion are a bright spot in an otherwise plastic piece of poop. I tell everyone who listens including Neptune support (back when I had reoccurring support calls with them... don’t miss that)- I’m not fully converted but I keep adding things to my apex graveyard... interesting coincidence how many things go bad right after upgrading firmware- buyer beware.

First thing I do with regards to any firmware, patch, or beta, is read what the early adapters have to say. I let the trail blazers go first then I follow suit. Furthermore I also read the notes to see what it is that it offers and decide if I need to upgrade anyway. I recently upgraded my apex OS. Only reason why is because I was installing the trident and that was a pre-req based on some changes they made.

Not negating anything you are saying other than you don't have to upgrade firmware or patches be it a controller for our reefs or playstation. Security patches are one thing - everything else can wait until I see what others are running into or not.

 

[DJF]

First thing I do with regards to any firmware, patch, or beta, is read what the early adapters have to say. I let the trail blazers go first then I follow suit. Furthermore I also read the notes to see what it is that it offers and decide if I need to upgrade anyway. I recently upgraded my apex OS. Only reason why is because I was installing the trident and that was a pre-req based on some changes they made.

Not negating anything you are saying other than you don't have to upgrade firmware or patches be it a controller for our reefs or playstation. Security patches are one thing - everything else can wait until I see what others are running into or not.

agreed- I am an early adopter, and I probably stress test beyond standard usage too- super happy with ghl- it’s tougher than me. I know a lot of people that are happy with their apex- I know far less that have had no problems.

 

[User1]

agreed- I am an early adopter, and I probably stress test beyond standard usage too- super happy with ghl- it’s tougher than me. I know a lot of people that are happy with their apex- I know far less that have had no problems.

All good. Sorry to hear about the troubles and that it required a change. Money more than anything else since it doesn't grow on trees. Right?

 

[DJF]

no it does not ... hopefully it’ll grow underwater with time- This is easily a 2k soapbox I’ll step off of lol. I definitely learned an important lesson about going all in on one company; the other lesson, which I hope gets across is, cheaper up front is not necessarily going to be less expensive in the long run.

 

[ca1ore]

Other than ‘gotta have it’ there seems little advantage to being an early adopter in this hobby (maybe in every hobby). Certainly early gen bugs are well avoided, but there’s also navigating the initial, invariable ‘best thing ever’ shilling. Funny how of all the best things ever, the vast majority are not LOL. I do occasionally fall victim to my own lack of wisdom and get something early. Usually to my regret, though not exclusively so. I did buy a trident within a few weeks of its release, so far no reason to regret that ..... though there’s still time.

 

[robbyg]

Other than ‘gotta have it’ there seems little advantage to being an early adopter in this hobby (maybe in every hobby). Certainly early gen bugs are well avoided, but there’s also navigating the initial, invariable ‘best thing ever’ shilling. Funny how of all the best things ever, the vast majority are not LOL. I do occasionally fall victim to my own lack of wisdom and get something early. Usually to my regret, though not exclusively so. I did buy a trident within a few weeks of its release, so far no reason to regret that ..... though there’s still time.

It’s really a mixed bag when it comes to Gen 1 equipment. I have several items that are Gen1 including my LED lighting system, my ASM G3 protein skimmer and reeflo dart return pump. In all three cases they have never changed the design for the better and still sell them today. The Dart pump I think ditched the expensive German Baldor motor and added a cheaper motor. My lights use the same top of the line Cree LEDs sold today.

When I think about it most changes take a long time. Neptune has a few early controllers but there was not much difference between any of them. Then about ten+ years later they came out with the Apex. Overall very little has changed with pumps, controllers, chillers, heaters and sumps over the last 10 years.
DC pumps may be the exception but after a lot of research, I am not convinced that they are very reliable.

The one area of constant change is skimmers. I think they have made every variation of fine bubbles rising to the top of container! I am not sure if any significant gains have been made but they have been “improving” the models every couple of years.

About the only area that IMHO has gotten consistently better upgrades is test kits.
Every 3 or 4 years a new type of kit hits the market and makes the older ones look completely obsolete. 2019 seems to be one of those years. The last time was Hanna.

 

[DJF]

I understand being an early adopter comes with risk but when a company releases (not beta) a firmware update publicly for an established system and then subsequently devices reliant on the system break- I think that’s on them. Can I say my devices broke because of the firmware update? No- is it a coincidence that the relay switch in two separate boxes for my atk broke right after? According to Neptune support yes. this latest firmware update (coincidently) took out one of my dos heads- I didn’t even bother calling them to get the same “send it in and it isn’t under warranty” response- I just was forced to move my doser faster than I wanted. Neptune lost my business not because the items broke but because they didn’t take ownership. It just takes 2 seconds with both a GHL and Neptune equivalent in each hand to recognize which one was built to last.

 

[MnFish1]

If my apex failed, it would be mightily inconvenient, but it would not crash the tank.

Well - since it is a 'controller' - what do you use it to control - and what would happen if it failed when you were on vacation - and you had no way to fix it for 24 hours. Obviously - even with the way mine was set up when the last disaster happened - if I had been home - my tank would have been fine - the problem was no alerts from Fusion - and No-one was in the house until about 24 hours after we left. Maybe you dont live in a climate where you turn down your thermostat when you're not at home - but our Nest thermostat automatically turned the temp down to 62 degrees - and there was no temperature alert, etc etc etc. Its always a combination of factors - obviously

 

[MnFish1]

I understand being an early adopter comes with risk but when a company releases (not beta) a firmware update publicly for an established system and then subsequently devices reliant on the system break- I think that’s on them. Can I say my devices broke because of the firmware update? No- is it a coincidence that the relay switch in two separate boxes for my atk broke right after? According to Neptune support yes. this latest firmware update (coincidently) took out one of my dos heads- I didn’t even bother calling them to get the same “send it in and it isn’t under warranty” response- I just was forced to move my doser faster than I wanted. Neptune lost my business not because the items broke but because they didn’t take ownership. It just takes 2 seconds with both a GHL and Neptune equivalent in each hand to recognize which one was built to last.

though I kind of agree with you - in all honesty - it could have been coincidence. I have to say - I have never had (except one particular employee) had ANY problems with Neptune tech support - in fact - they have for the most part been quite good about replacing things (when the problem was theirs) - And They're well aware of comments on message boards.

I think what some of the people who are totally thinking people that have problems are saying is its just isolated incidents - I for one - love my apex classic - it was basically plug and play - and has never had a problem - and when you look at the support sites - I do not see any major problems with Apex Classics as compared to 2016. Not sure what to make of it - maybe its more complex and thus more apt to have user error - or something akin to that. Either way - If you read multiple posts you see people who 'loved their classic' - and are 'Luke warm or worse' on the 2016.

 

[WallyB]

Neptune customer for 15 years. I've tried them all, GHL, Neptune, DigitalAquatics (lol), etc.

GHL is not even remotely worth the cost premium over Neptune products. They have just as many issues with the modules and add on products (if not more so), you just never hear about it because they sell maybe 10% of the amount customers Neptune does. You're paying a premium for modern european looking housings, nothing more.

The KH Director, shining example here, it's a dang joke. There is no magic reason Neptune absolutely crushes every single competitor sales wise. It's just that the competition simply cannot compete from a value or quality standpoint.

Ecotech looks to be making a run at them now, can't wait to see what they have up their sleeves.

Cool. Nice to see a comment from someone who tried more than an Apex Controller.
I'm an Apex Fan (old stuff), and posted earlier about watching a Friends Tank when his NewerModel Apex Failed.

I considered Switching to GHL for (KH director) since I wasn't going to throw away a Good Old Apex (x2) to get a Trident, and I only wanted Alk monitoring (and wish list is PO4)
Looked at other Alk Monitors. Each have their goods and Negatives, but none suit my specific needs. 3 Tanks and One a Week Measurement, Cheap Regeant, probes, etc
Gave up and Built my own Alk Monitor, which I will hook into my old Reliable Apex and see data/control thru Fusion

My point is Neptune has been absolutely Great for me over the years. An inspiration years ago, yet even these days their original foundation Software is Flexible enough to run a tank very effectively and do some funky stuff quite easily (like adding your own DIY stuff). Key is, must be set up right, and must understand that things do fail.
Problem to me seem their newer stuff is getting cheaper and less reliable.

Hoping Neptune Solves that issue, and some of their recent Marketing Mentality and gets back on track to being the company that I've liked and trusted for years.
I actually have recently contacted Ecotech Support, and it was way worse than Apex. but only my first call.

 

[ca1ore]

Well - since it is a 'controller' - what do you use it to control - and what would happen if it failed when you were on vacation - and you had no way to fix it for 24 hours. Obviously - even with the way mine was set up when the last disaster happened - if I had been home - my tank would have been fine - the problem was no alerts from Fusion - and No-one was in the house until about 24 hours after we left. Maybe you dont live in a climate where you turn down your thermostat when you're not at home - but our Nest thermostat automatically turned the temp down to 62 degrees - and there was no temperature alert, etc etc etc. Its always a combination of factors - obviously

I have backup systems beyond apex for critical things like temperature, ATO and circulation. Now, if I were on vacation and one of those backups failed in addition to the apex then my tank would be screwed indeed. No amount of planning can account for or mitigate against every eventuality.

 

[MnFish1]

I have backup systems beyond apex for critical things like temperature, ATO and circulation. Now, if I were on vacation and one of those backups failed in addition to the apex then my tank would be screwed indeed. No amount of planning can account for or mitigate against every eventuality.

The problem with mine was not that the apex failed (though it did) - it was the EB that failed. Do you have 2 ATO's heaters, pumps - that are not connected to the apex ? Just curious

 

[ca1ore]

The problem with mine was not that the apex failed (though it did) - it was the EB that failed. Do you have 2 ATO's heaters, pumps - that are not connected to the apex ? Just curious

I do. Made a concerted effort a few years ago to avoid apex as single point of failure. Main pump is the only problem as there are good reasons for me to connect it through apex. Even though I have no automated backup, failure wouldn’t be immediately problematic. I have backup heat that runs off an independent ranco and a second ATO that runs off independent dual redundant floats. Half my vortech pumps run off apex, the other off ReefLink. Same with the lights. Mighty inconvenient if apex failed, but not likely lethal. I also have a standby genny on the house and an on call local reefer (I am also for him). If my tank were to fail it’d be self negligence/stupidity or major structural failure.