Hayden

I had a clown jump into my overflow once. After many unsucsesfull attempts to net it... i found it impossible to get the net around the pipes. I shut off the pumps and drained all but ~2 inches of water out of the overflow. A little filter floss shoved between the pipes on the two sides kept the fish in the center section of the overflow. I was then able to easily reach all the way down the almost empty overflow and grab the fish by hand.

Keep in mind that if you have an EcoTech battery backup your vortech will automatically go to low flow mode to conserve power in an outage. If you keep on a generic ups, your Vortech will run on full power (or whatever it's normally set at) using more power... Until you get home and manually turn down. EcoTech claims a 36 hour run time for MP40 and 72 hours for MP10. I have no personal data to confirm though... Just info from reading the manual.

Really depends on the power draw of the pump. The solid state outlets (1-3 & 5-7 on the EB8) have issues turning off very low powered devices. I have a very small 3.5 watt 70gph pump that I use for ato that needs to be on the relay outlets as it doesn't work on the solid state outlets. But a larger 600gph pump at 15-20 watts will usually work fine on the solid state outlets. Also the solid state outlets have a max draw of 5amps (~600watts) per outlet.... So don't go plugging in your circulation pump for your Olympic sized swimming pool into it either What pump were you using?

I've have one now (bit of a blue belly) and it doesn't bother my fish or corals. Medium size. When I got him he was missing half of one of his arm's (just past the elbow). It was like that for 3-4 molts. Then one day his entire arm was gone. He just had the one arm then. Two weeks later after another molt his missing arm had regrown (claw and all) and was back to having both arms (fully functional). His "new arm" was slightly thinner than his other one. Reminded me of someone who just had a cast taken off and all the muscles had shrunk from no usage. A few months later you cant notice the difference between his arms and would have no idea he ever had a problem. It was totally cool to watch him progress through his molting stages and watch how nature takes it course.

I get the Login prompt for your Apex! Looks like its working. I'd highly suggest not leaving it as 80 for security reasons... But that's your call. From Apex main menu go to System>Net Setup>HTTP Port and change from there. You will need to reset your port forwarding on your router to match then. You may need to restart your apex network after changing ports too (System>Net Setup>Restart).

Change your port...... Based on your ip looks like you are a Comcast subscriber. From Comcasts support site... http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-support/internet/list-of-blocked-ports/ looks like they block 1080. But they dont list 80, which is unlike other ISP's ive seen. I usually use ports in the 4000-5000 range.

80 is the default web server port and will most likely be blocked by your ISP. But you can try it if you want. Your ISP may not block it. Have you tried connecting to it using your external ip address and not your dyndns address? Using a web browser you should be able to connect to it from both your apex's internal ip (http://192.168.?.?:1080) and your exterrnal ip (http://70.174.?.?:1080 - or whatever your external ip is) from at home.

If you haven't already done so, You may need to change the port your apex web server is running on. Many ISP's will block the default incomming web server port and could explain why you are having issues accessing via the Internet. I believe some basic port info is on pg 33 in the Unofficial Apex guide mentioned above.

If the apex brain unit and the EB8 lose communication the fallback status is what the outlet power status will revert to. So if your apex brain unit fails or the aquabus (USB type connection ) cable connecting the EB8 to the brain fails or gets unplugged your heater outlet will shut off in your current program. Whether you want it on or off depends on what type of heater you have plugged in. If you have a heater with built in thermostat you may want fallback on if your heater is set to 79 or so. If you don't have a temp adjustment on your heater then you want fallback off.

Wow, that's awesome. It makes me want to go setup a time lapse video of mine to see how it moves.

Do you need 2 remote pumps? Or one remote pump and one water exchange module? To me it looks like the water exchange module is basically a remote pump with a water pressure Shut-off sensor (similar to in avast's top off kit). Then you'd just program the top off (water exchange module) for more than what you'd need and it would stop when the correct water level was reached. I was planning on doing the same and that's what I thought I'd need to do. I'd be very interested to hear if you've tried yet or what you were planning. Thanks.

I'd also suggest to get an add on demonization canister for your RO filter. Air Water & Ice also carries one here. It'll get the effectiveness of your RO filter from 99% to 99.9%. How long to run lights can be a bit relative. It all depends on the type of light (CF, HQI, or LED) and the type of corals and their placement in the tank. I had the HQI hood on my old JBJ nano and ran the lights for 5 1/2 hours a day and it was more than enough light for what I had in the tank (all soft, mostly zoa's). Any more light and I would get GHA spots. I switched to an LED hood and needed to up the hours to 7 hours before my corals were happy again. I also didn't need to run my chiller with the LED's.... Try cutting back on your lights by an hour per day for a week or two and see if you notice a change. Have you looked into ditching the ceramic rings and adding cheto in the filter basket with a fuge light on the back? If this is a new tank setup, don't worry about it too much. It's common in new tanks for a bit of a bloom like this.

Set the fan up on your controller. If the temp drops too much, you can have the apex shut the fan off. You'll go through a little more top off water because of the evaporation, but it's still cheaper than a chiller.

I used the JBJ heater controller on a holding tank I was running for a while. It worked out great, however has a 2 degree swing (1 degree +/- the set temp) like many heaters. I use an Apex on my main tank. With an Apex you can eliminate the 2 degree swing, but you'll have more on/off cycles with your heater.

I don't have FIOS, but my ISP blocks port 80 (default web server port) so I can't run a web server. I've had to change the port the Apex web service runs on. I also needed to setup a port forward in my router to send incomming connections on the port the Apex is running on to the Apex's IP. I'm assuming most ISP's are like this. Have you tried changing the Apex port and setting up port forwarding? I can help walk you through if you need.

I have this same 100gpd unit. Just over 2 years old now. I had the same reaction as you when I first got it. I love it though, never had any issues with it. "all this stuff" as you put it is a low water pressure pump shut-off and auto flush for the membrane. Very low water pressure into the unit (like incoming water was turned off) will turn the water pump off. And when water is turned back on to the unit it will turn the water pump back on and auto flush the membrane for 18 seconds. I have also added a separate DI canister after the membrane - it sounds like yours is setup this way too. If you haven't already ordered a new unit or are just interested in getting this one running I can answer any other questions you have about it.

Sorry about the late notice but I had some complications this morning that ended early. I should be there at 12.

+1

If it looks like this (similar to the one in the pic in the link I put above): - ----(*---- + the tip or inner connector is positive. And the outer connector is negative. if it looks like this: + ----(*----- - the tip or inner connector is negative. And the outer connector is positive. Assuming it's the first one (with a positive tip/inner connector) then you will solder your positive wire to the inner connector on your 'DC Power Connector'. The negative wire will be soldered to the terminal for the outer connector on your 'DC Power Connector'. Looking at page 4 in the directions you posted (http://www.vinnymarini.com/pictures/rapid_docs/RapidLED_diy_dimmer.pdf) it lists the "DC Jack + (center terminal)". So yes, it does confirm that the inner connector with the "hole" in the center (as you put it) should be positive and the outer connector is negative. Hope this helps.

It could be either. It will depend on what your power supply is outputting. This image I found may help. http://www53.babidou...12V1.5Apd01.jpg Just above the "Made In China" at the bottom there is a diagram showing whether the tip is positive or negative. Your power supply you are using should have a similar description on whether the tip is + or -. You'd just need to hook up your connector to match. But as thefishman65 said above, a meter will also tell you whether it's a positive or negative tip.

Yeah it's the water pressure where I am, I constantly have issues with it. The faucet attachments never work well for me because of it, I've tried 3 different brands with no luck. I've given up on them. I just hook up a maxi-jet to the 25' hose that came with it to pump out the buckets.

I have one of those and it doesn't work too well. I always had prime it to work first.... fill the hose with faucet water then flip the switch on the faucet adapter to start the suction. Also, the suction isn't very good. If the water level you are sucking out is more than ~10 inches below the bottom of the faucet adapter the suction comes to a slow stop. But this is from my experience with it. For my water changes, I keep a small maxi-jet 400 in the bottom of the sump hooked to a power strip all by itself. The vinyl tube is hooked to 2x90deg barbed fittings to form a small u-hook that I hook to the rim of a 5gal bucket on my table/work bench next to the tank. I just hit the on/off on the power strip and wait a few minutes for the maxi-jet to pump out the water into the bucket. I also have a similar setup to fill the tank... a second 5gal bucket that I mix SW in is on the table next to the 'drain out' bucket i just filled up with tank water. Another small maxi-jet 400 is in that bucket with 2-3ft vinyl tube I keep wrapped inside the bucket running to mix the SW. I just shut off that pump, grab the vinyl tube out of the bucket, point the tube to the overflow area in my tank and turn on to start filling the tank again. I hope to automate much of this with multiple float switches and a program on my controller whenever I get the time. Hope this helps.