Apex Fusion Heartbeat - Tank crashed over the weekend

How many Fusion users are aware of the “Heartbeat” feature and how many users are using it?

  • Aware and not using it because it is unreliable or does not work

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    10

vmotta

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#1
Hello reef community.

Even though I have been an avid reader of this forum for many years, this is only my second post. So I apologize in advance if I don’t follow proper protocol.

My main goal here is to find out how many Apex Fusion users are aware of the Heartbeat feature that was added a few years back. And also to share my story in the hope of preventing users from having what happened to me happen to them.

I unfortunately was not aware of “Heatbeat” feature and my 180 gallon reef tank died over the weekend. For whatever reason my Apex Classic failed over this past weekend. It cut power to both EB8 Energy bars. As it turns out I also had fallback off on most outlets including pumps.

Before I went home on Friday late afternoon, I went through my usual routine. I changed filter sock, cleaned glass, checked dosing containers and tubing outlet, wiped protein skimmer reservoir (Red Sea Skimmer) and fed the fish. I had the Apex dialed in in terms of alerts to email and text, multiple temp probes, lights where set to shut off at certain tank temps, 4 leak sensors, etc, etc. Over the years I had gotten good at programing and I had moved to Fusion once I found out about it.

But the one thing I did not have enabled because I was not aware it was there, was “Heartbeat”.

Long sad story short, my tank crashed. My tank is at my office, which has always worked out great because when I go on extended vacations there is someone always at the office that can keep an eye on and care for the tank. When my team got in at 7:30am on Monday I received the dreaded text. Unfortunately all fish died and most corals bleached. I had fish that I had kept for 14 years. Most where 8 years or older. A few hermits survived and I tried to salvage as much coral as I could. I took the coral to my local fish shop to see if they could save them. It has been a very sad and unfortunate event.

So my question to the community is, how many Fusion users are aware of the “Heartbeat” feature and how many users are using it?

I have contacted Neptune and have asked them to add an alert of some type to let users know that “Heartbeat is not enabled”. This one simple but powerful feature could have saved my fishes lives.
 
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vmotta

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#3
I have a classic, and I do use Fusion. I just was not aware of the Heartbeat feature. And Fusion web portal never alerted me that it was off. Do you have the feature enabled? Ae you an Apex user?
 

bvysochin

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#5
Sorry to hear. This is the exact reason we will never have any of our return pumps on EB8's, even with fallback on/off, I simply don't trust it to do what it's supposed to do. Same with placing return pumps or critical equip on GFCI circuits..

So did you lose power, or how did the EB8's fail ? Was it only the EB8's that failed, or did the actual Apex brain also go down ? I'm guessing that if it was only the EB8's that went down, and the brain stayed on and connected, the heartbeat wouldn't have helped anyways.
 

vmotta

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#6
bvysochin, it sounds like you are aware of the heartbeat feature. I think a surge hit the brain and it shut down and cut power to energy bars. I contacted support, and they verified that device shut down, but log did not give a reason why. Do you use a surge protector on Apex and or pumps not controlled by Apex?
 
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#7
sorry to hear about your lost, yes I'm aware of the heartbeat feature. It has given me a few notification through the years... but luckily so far it's only been cuz my internet went down, no failures or power outage.
 

bvysochin

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#8
bvysochin, it sounds like you are aware of the heartbeat feature. I think a surge hit the brain and it shut down and cut power to energy bars. I contacted support, and they verified that device shut down, but log did not give a reason why. Do you use a surge protector on Apex and or pumps not controlled by Apex?
Yeah, we use the heartbeat. And back in the day, before heartbeat even existed, we had battery back ups for our internet connection, router, and adapter to power the Apex, to notify us the power was out. The heartbeat eliminated the need for all that. However, I don't believe the heartbeat will do much good if a specific EB8 craps out. I believe it's more of a heads up for you to know that your power went out and the Apex servers can no longer communicate with your Apex. I know there is code you can insert to notify you if a specific EB8 loses power.

We dont use any type of surge protector on the Apex or any pumps. We do have a standby gas generator that takes care of any power outages, and it also monitors the line voltage incase it ever drops below safe levels, it will disconnect utility power and generate it's own.

Do you have any type of camera on your tank that you can connect to, and at least make sure the water is circulating? A $20 wyze cam off amazon would even do the job.
 

vmotta

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#9
Yes I do have a cam. Its my go to when I am on vacation or when I get an alert.

Thank you to those of you who took the time to respond and share.
 
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#10
I think there is some type of glitch in the latest update cause the eb8 that runs my qt setup has been turning off and on randomly for the last week with out any reason. I’ve even changed out the aquabus cables thinking maybe that was the issue.
It’s strange tho. The whole eb8 will turn off for about 20 seconds then click back on.
 

vmotta

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#12
Mine was doing the same thing. I tried several things to correct it including a different power outlet. A different power outlet seemed to help but it would still reboot randomly. Support states that new firmware version 4.53 will correct this. What version are you running?
 

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