Apex=Boom
 

Well, after many years, my Apex decided to leave me tonight. I've run it so long I forget how to set up the tank without it. It's been fun for the last couple hours. Now to get a new base unit shipped here by Saturday. That should be fun.

What caused the death ?

I think Brad looked at it the wrong way.

Age I guess. It just started cycling on and off. I updated firm ware, no help. It wouldn't stay online more than 4 minutes.

I've ordered a new one, and need to suck up to Jeff in the morning to get it here yesterday :) I don't even own a timer anymore, so kind of dead in the water with out it.

Anyone ever replaced a base and have tips to no EFF it up?

Can't help you with the "replace a base with no eff" but FWIW my tank ran (albeit inhabitants-less) without a base unit for several months until I decided I wasn't quitting, then I just sent my base in for repair. It actually was surprisingly cheaper than I thought it would be, the biggest cost of the whole affair was the shipping both ways (which itself wasn't really THAT bad either).

Anyhow, so bearing in mind that I didn't experience actually replacing a base unit .. my understanding is that your EB8 unit will itself have some memory that will probably make it back into your base unit. Ie., whatever each outlet was running, it should probably remember. It will basically be your base unit functions such as alarms, virtual outlets, timers, etc. that you'll need to reprogram.

You may wish to consider sending your old one in for repairs. Then you can either sell it or keep it as a spare. After my Apex meltdown, I can say that for myself if money was no object I would buy a second controller and have them as a redundant pair and possibly arbitrating or watchdogging each other in the case that one goes berserk again that there would be a way to catch this sooner.

The "money not an object" thing not really having worked out yet, my more immediate solution was to put my heater on two controllers - the Apex AND a Ranco. That's just me though. I've also come to the opinion I need a smaller heater for my tank, which is now on the list of equipment to-buy as time rolls forward...

But I digress. Back to topic: good luck with the reprogramming..

I got some good advice on the neptune forums, most of my stuff is answered. Apparently support has some special setting you can use as well. So I asked for that, we'll see.

I have a backup.cfg and only 2 EB 8 and a feeder, so hoping it will be easy enough. I have to reset fusion somehow, not sure on that part yet.

I will probably send this one for repairs once I'm not mad anymore, as having a spare would have saved me hours of grief last night. And I couldn't go to the gym, and that ****es me off.

Anyway, the big thing now is getting J&L to ship that to me by last night. Yup, that's a challenge, but I'm sure they're good enough.. although opening at 11 puts me behind right out of the gate. We'll see.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...a63a5fe519.jpg

Frankly, that's more important to me than this stoopid box of water in my house. I almost just left it unplugged last night. So close to done.

I hear ya.

For the most part I'd be tempted to just run barebones until the new unit comes. Tank will live without lights (or just turn them on/off by hand), you can feed by hand for a couple days, run a subset (or all) of the pumps on manual for a little while.

For me the biggest concern would be the heater if yours is oversized for the tank (like mine is apparently). If you don't have a secondary means of controlling it then maybe just go without. It takes a while for a tank to cool down and it's not going to cool down past room temperature anyhow so unless that is really cold then it's probably fine. I ran my tank without the heater for months after the disaster and even without the tank lights on, the couple urchins and tigertails that I couldn't remove seemed to do just fine. (And so did the 2 million aiptasia that sprouted up once all the predators were gone. On a side note, man I love my butterflies, one month of two butterflies in the tank and not a single aiptasia left. But I digress again.)

Anyhow that's my advice. KISS and go to the gym!