WAR5150
Guest
As I've said before, I am active duty military pilot and with that comes a unique set of circumstances that is not conducive to a reef tank, i.e. being gone a lot. I know I am not the only one who travels for work, but it is just something we deal with. I've wanted an aquarium for years and got started immediately with my move here. This is the beginning of our story...
Because of my situation, I bought a lot of Apex gear for piece of mind, along with a camera that I can check in on and ensure there are no leaks, my ATO level is dropping as expected, etc. My most recent trip involved being gone for over three weeks, Fortunately at this point, I only have four small corals and they're fairly low maintenance. Unfortunately, I did not have a great plan for the care of my system while I was gone. This is mainly due to mistrust of people I work with, location and lack of time to train someone up to my standard. Regardless, I have to take full responsibility for what happened.
Part of my training included five days in the woods where I had zero access to phone/internet of any sort. Funny enough, on that Monday afternoon, we were discussing stressors we had in our lives and I mentioned the aquarium without proper care or ability for me to check in on it. I acknowledged that things were probably fine, but little did I know what was in store.
On Wednesday afternoon I checked my phone immediately as I had access again. Weird, the lights were off when I checked the camera and the app controlling lights said zero connectivity. Go over to Fusion and there is zero connectivity. Somehow, I had a complete failure and I did not know why. Immediately get a hold of someone from work who agrees to check on the system the next day.
Bottom line: I had everything plugged into my Neptune EB832 and that completely failed. Fortunately I had a spare and the work friend was able to move everything over to the spare and verify everything was in working order before he departed. As Fusion started to come back online, I noticed the last reliable reading I had was from 0900 Monday morning, it was now Thursday afternoon. While things were returning to ops normal, it was still another week and a half before I got home and could really investigate things. Sadly when I got back, I discovered that one of my corals, a finger leather, did not survive the ordeal. I cannot pinpoint exactly what was the cause of death, but I'm certain the root cause was the power failure. While one casualty does not seem bad for the circumstances, it was 25% of my entire system and now I just see a sad bare spot where it used to be.
Now I am in contact with Neptune about getting my EB832 sent back and diagnosed but I'm a bit miffed that they want me to pay shipping there. Maybe I'm entitled, but I feel like they should be providing a shipping label (heck, Amazon would do that) for me to send the equipment back considering I bought it at the end of November and did not install until December, so everything is easily under warranty.
So there it is: my first long trip with life and had a minor tragedy occur. I left lots of details out of the story since it is already long enough, but I learned a lot from this experience too, to include I need to trust others when another situation like this arises.
Because of my situation, I bought a lot of Apex gear for piece of mind, along with a camera that I can check in on and ensure there are no leaks, my ATO level is dropping as expected, etc. My most recent trip involved being gone for over three weeks, Fortunately at this point, I only have four small corals and they're fairly low maintenance. Unfortunately, I did not have a great plan for the care of my system while I was gone. This is mainly due to mistrust of people I work with, location and lack of time to train someone up to my standard. Regardless, I have to take full responsibility for what happened.
Part of my training included five days in the woods where I had zero access to phone/internet of any sort. Funny enough, on that Monday afternoon, we were discussing stressors we had in our lives and I mentioned the aquarium without proper care or ability for me to check in on it. I acknowledged that things were probably fine, but little did I know what was in store.
On Wednesday afternoon I checked my phone immediately as I had access again. Weird, the lights were off when I checked the camera and the app controlling lights said zero connectivity. Go over to Fusion and there is zero connectivity. Somehow, I had a complete failure and I did not know why. Immediately get a hold of someone from work who agrees to check on the system the next day.
Bottom line: I had everything plugged into my Neptune EB832 and that completely failed. Fortunately I had a spare and the work friend was able to move everything over to the spare and verify everything was in working order before he departed. As Fusion started to come back online, I noticed the last reliable reading I had was from 0900 Monday morning, it was now Thursday afternoon. While things were returning to ops normal, it was still another week and a half before I got home and could really investigate things. Sadly when I got back, I discovered that one of my corals, a finger leather, did not survive the ordeal. I cannot pinpoint exactly what was the cause of death, but I'm certain the root cause was the power failure. While one casualty does not seem bad for the circumstances, it was 25% of my entire system and now I just see a sad bare spot where it used to be.
Now I am in contact with Neptune about getting my EB832 sent back and diagnosed but I'm a bit miffed that they want me to pay shipping there. Maybe I'm entitled, but I feel like they should be providing a shipping label (heck, Amazon would do that) for me to send the equipment back considering I bought it at the end of November and did not install until December, so everything is easily under warranty.
So there it is: my first long trip with life and had a minor tragedy occur. I left lots of details out of the story since it is already long enough, but I learned a lot from this experience too, to include I need to trust others when another situation like this arises.
