Apex Trident Pros and Cons

[NanoCrazed]

And out of stock as of 8:47am

I saw them last night as was tempted for another unit... just because, it's hoarding time. I may not be able to get TP... but dammit at least I can stockpile Tridents! ...esp with free ship.

 

[sfsuphysics]

I saw them last night as was tempted for another unit... just because, it's hoarding time. I may not be able to get TP... but dammit at least I can stockpile Tridents! ...esp with free ship.

And with all your tanks why not have another monitor for them! You can hook multiple Tridents to a single Apex right?

 

[NanoCrazed]

And with all your tanks why not have another monitor for them! You can hook multiple Tridents to a single Apex right?

If it tested more than just alk, Ca, and Mg... I'd be more than tempted...

 

[NanoCrazed]

uggh... Got my Trident replaced by Neptune after the original failure... replacement unit has been working fine... but for the last few days, it's acting as a daily water change unit. Sucks up water... tells me there's no water sample despite filling the vial... empties the vial, repeats non-stop...

sigh.

wish there was a way to abort tests or priming on this darn thing... restart commands and unplugging aren't really effective


Hopefully this is not another equipment swap issue...

 

[Chromis]

Can you post a screen shot of your Apex dashboard when it’s doing that? I will try to help, from a standpoint of my user error messing up the always-working trident I can at least tell you what a person might be doing wrong

I do agree I would like an “abort mission” feature on the Trident commmands. If you accidentally run the wrong sequence/on the wrong sample, it would be good to be able to cancel it so it doesn’t waste time/reagents.

 

[thanh510]

uggh... Got my Trident replaced by Neptune after the original failure... replacement unit has been working fine... but for the last few days, it's acting as a daily water change unit. Sucks up water... tells me there's no water sample despite filling the vial... empties the vial, repeats non-stop...

sigh.

wish there was a way to abort tests or priming on this darn thing... restart commands and unplugging aren't really effective


Hopefully this is not another equipment swap issue...

Is it the 2nd time that this is happening? I am curious if it's the position of the unit. The manual did warn about putting it too high or too low from the top of the water.

 

[NanoCrazed]

Can you post a screen shot of your Apex dashboard when it’s doing that? I will try to help, from a standpoint of my user error messing up the always-working trident I can at least tell you what a person might be doing wrong

I do agree I would like an “abort mission” feature on the Trident commmands. If you accidentally run the wrong sequence/on the wrong sample, it would be good to be able to cancel it so it doesn’t waste time/reagents.

Nothing exciting... just says "no water sample" and continually primes despite vial actually filling up with water...

Followed troubleshooting except performing shutdown that empties the lines since i didn't have time but will do so later tonight.

I must have gremlins that have chosen to shelter at my place. My gyre controller goes out, the my trident goes wonky... and just realized my solar inverter is dead... sigh.

 

[NanoCrazed]

Nothing exciting... just says "no water sample" and continually primes despite vial actually filling up with water...

Followed troubleshooting except performing shutdown that empties the lines since i didn't have time but will do so later tonight.

I must have gremlins that have chosen to shelter at my place. My gyre controller goes out, the my trident goes wonky... and just realized my solar inverter is dead... sigh.

View attachment 15645

Oh and one of my ph probes skewed way off as well

 

[NanoCrazed]

Is it the 2nd time that this is happening? I am curious if it's the position of the unit. The manual did warn about putting it too high or too low from the top of the water.

First time was stirbar not working... my trident seems positioned ok.

 

[thanh510]

Nothing exciting... just says "no water sample" and continually primes despite vial actually filling up with water...

Followed troubleshooting except performing shutdown that empties the lines since i didn't have time but will do so later tonight.

I must have gremlins that have chosen to shelter at my place. My gyre controller goes out, the my trident goes wonky... and just realized my solar inverter is dead... sigh.

View attachment 15645

Wooooa! Maybe a power surge from the dying inverter? All these items going bad at the same time doesn’t sound good! I had one of my sites dealing with some variances in power and it was due to an improperly torque power connector! It was arrrrcing! And this is after months of trying to deal with PGE to fix it.

Anyway to check the voltage? I was using an APC being monitored via the network to get my info! Caused a lot of headaches for sure.


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[ofzakaria]

Wooooa! Maybe a power surge from the dying inverter? All these items going bad at the same time doesn’t sound good! I had one of my sites dealing with some variances in power and it was due to an improperly torque power connector! It was arrrrcing! And this is after months of trying to deal with PGE to fix it.

Anyway to check the voltage? I was using an APC being monitored via the network to get my info! Caused a lot of headaches for sure.


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I doubt this is the issue. Even if there is a surge on the inverter, there are many joints of protection from the ac inverter output to the dc power going in to these equipments..
A surge will trip panel ckt breaker or the home outlet breaker or the power supply OCP ckt of each device. It's near impossible to translate a power surge on our ac to a surge on the dc line of common household or aquatium equipments.

 

[NanoCrazed]

I don't think it's a surge for the downstream equipment issues.

Though could be a surge at the inverter... thankfully there's a long warranty for the inverter

 

[ofzakaria]

I don't think it's a surge for the downstream equipment issues.

Though could be a surge at the inverter... thankfully there's a long warranty for the inverter

If inverter surged it will trip the ckt breaker at its output.
The surge will have to burn the breaker and the power supply of the device. It's near impossible to translate a surge on the ac of a device power supply to a surge on the dc line at the output of the device power supply.

 

[thanh510]

I doubt this is the issue. Even if there is a surge on the inverter, there are many joints of protection from the ac inverter output to the dc power going in to these equipments..
A surge will trip panel ckt breaker or the home outlet breaker or the power supply OCP ckt of each device. It's near impossible to translate a power surge on our ac to a surge on the dc line of common household or aquatium equipments.

Definitely agree that ac to dc is usually is safeguarded as most of them accepts a large range of ac voltage. But a circuit breaker or a surge strip won’t protect from voltage variation. That’s why they sale whole house regulators.

I was seeing fluctuations from 105v to all they way to 130v. It broke cheap dc adapters. Only the ones good ones survive. Most appliance can operate on large ranges, like TV, laptop a, lightbulbs, etc.

Seeing that a couple of stuff die, it’s something going on.


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[ofzakaria]

Definitely agree that ac to dc is usually is safeguarded as most of them accepts a large range of ac voltage. But a circuit breaker or a surge strip won’t protect from voltage variation. That’s why they sale whole house regulators.

I was seeing fluctuations from 105v to all they way to 130v. It broke cheap dc adapters. Only the ones good ones survive. Most appliance can operate on large ranges, like TV, laptop a, lightbulbs, etc.

Seeing that a couple of stuff die, it’s something going on.


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Possible in very specific scenarios most of which will not apply to things that run on 5 to 12v as in smaller equipments like trident.
Voltage variant is produced when ac dip below the power supply rectifying threshold.
Decent power supply have over current protection which will protect you from passing higher than spect current to the power supply. So when you get a transient the most u get is lower dc output on the power supply when the transient input ac swing in the opposite polarity (negative voltage value) but it will protect from the overshooting of the transient. Again I say decent power supply here..anything is possible with bad designs and cheap components
Ac fluctuations more likely damage the power supply of the equipments not the equipment itself..
At least that's my experience...

 

[thanh510]

If inverter surged it will trip the ckt breaker at its output.
The surge will have to burn the breaker and the power supply of the device. It's near impossible to translate a surge on the ac of a device power supply to a surge on the dc line at the output of the device power supply.

Circuit breakers prevent fires. More less surges. It will trip with large surges, like blown transformer or lightning but even then some stuff will break. The only time I’ve seen a circuit breaker burn is when it failed.

Possible in very specific scenarios most of which will not apply to things that run on 5 to 12v as in smaller equipments like trident.
Voltage variant is pronounced when ac dip below the power supply rectifying threshold.
Decent power supply have over current protection which will protect you from passing higher than spect current to the power supply. So when you get a transient the most u get is lower dc output on the power supply when the transient input ac swing in the opposite polarity (negative voltage value) but it will protect from the overshooting of the transient. Again I say decent power supply here..anything is possible with bad designs and cheap components
Ac fluctuations more likely damage the power supply of the equipments not the equipment itself..
At least that's my experience...

Absolutely. But we are talking about apex here. As far as construction is concerned, it’s cheap all around and I would not trust them to handle a varying income voltage(I plugged it into a battery backup).

I still have not found any info on how much amps their aqua-bus power distribution can handle. They allow you to power pumps, tridents, and so much more without any details on how many devices you can daisy chain(other than the programming max).And then they throw in a dc adapter from time to time with devices to maybe supplement the bus? Buuuut hooooow? I’m sure each energy bar is adding more power.

I would check to see how many devices you have down the light and remove a couple to see if the trident fixes itself?

So far from what I’ve seen is that the apex is terrible at “diagnosing itself”. Like if an EB fails to work, it spits out random errors?

 

[ofzakaria]

Circuit breakers prevent fires. More less surges. It will trip with large surges, like blown transformer or lightning but even then some stuff will break. The only time I’ve seen a circuit breaker burn is when it failed.



Absolutely. But we are talking about apex here. As far as construction is concerned, it’s cheap all around and I would not trust them to handle a varying income voltage(I plugged it into a battery backup).

I still have not found any info on how much amps their aqua-bus power distribution can handle. They allow you to power pumps, tridents, and so much more without any details on how many devices you can daisy chain(other than the programming max).And then they throw in a dc adapter from time to time with devices to maybe supplement the bus? Buuuut hooooow? I’m sure each energy bar is adding more power.

I would check to see how many devices you have down the light and remove a couple to see if the trident fixes itself?

So far from what I’ve seen is that the apex is terrible at “diagnosing itself”. Like if an EB fails to work, it spits out random errors?

I cannot argue against your logic ha ha.
Agreed..

 

[ofzakaria]

Did you figure out what's the issue yet?

 

[NanoCrazed]

Did you figure out what's the issue yet?

The problem when away... but not sure if I know why. the one thing that seemed to make the difference was I swapped over to a different 1link port. but i am not sure that was it either.

 

[Scott Sweet]

I am an Alkatronic and to be Mastertronic fan. I also have the Reefbot...so...

For me, I do not want to intentionally rely solely on the Apex. I have already had a board fail on it.