Neptune Apex FMK/FMM

[Miles]

Look what came in the mail today. Thought I'd give you guys a sneak peek. 
Hopefully going to get this set up in the next week or so.

[Wall_Tank]

Looks like fun

[muttley000]

Very nice!  Looking forward to your review

[Miles]

Turns out that I still needed to order a couple plumbing parts to to make everything work. So this project is stalled until the weekend/early next week.

Just a little more background info on this... I'm a member of the Neptune Systems Insiders (basically a glorified name for beta testers). Feel free to ask me any questions or suggest possible tests and I will do what I can to get you answers. The FMK/FMM is the first product that they are doing for the NSI program (I was also involved in the beta for Apex Fusion a couple years back), this product isn't technically in the beta testing phase anymore but in more of a pre-release phase. They are just having some people play with them and see if they have any issues that may need to be added to the documentation or special use cases that they may not have considered. Neptune Systems encourages sharing pictures, videos, etc... so if there is something you'd like to see let me know.

[lazylivin]

I like that it connects to the classic Apex. I am not 100% sure what it does? Does it monitor flow and send alert if say return pump fails? Do you know what the price point is going to be?

[Miles]

I believe that the price point is going to be around $200.

There are several different use cases that I have seen. You can set GPH thresholds and then turn outlets on and off based on that. I'm going to use the 1" sensor on my return line to tune my flow (I currently have an Iwaki pump that with about 15ft of head and I have no idea how much flow I'm getting), I'm going to throw one of the 1/2" sensors on my ATO pump to keep track of how much I'm topping off (currently I'm just using a couple of float switches in a big stock tank and really have no idea how much water I'm topping off other than how often it occurs), and I'm planning on using the second 1/2" sensor on the input to my BRS dual reactor.

If you have a DC pump that can be controlled by the Apex the possibilities here are practically endless for dialing in specific flow rates for practically any sensor input.  This is definitely not a add-on that is required for basic operation, but it does provide for many opportunities for Control Freaks and those who like to play with gadgets. 

[lazylivin]

I will defintley be getting one. Getting an alert based on reduced flow sounds worth it to me. Do you know when they will be available? Also have you heard any inside info on thr alk monitoring?

[Miles]

I don't have a release date but I'm guessing sometime in the next couple months.


As far as the Alk monitoring goes, I haven't seen anything on that since the Reefbuilders article in October. If I had to guess on that one I'd say  that it is probably quite a ways off.

[Wall_Tank]

Assuming that is a rotary wheel based design.......can you disassemble to clean?  What's it look like inside?

[Miles]

It is a rotary wheel design. As far as disassembly goes, I'm sure it is possible, but I'm not really sure what they recommend for cleaning at this point until more documentation comes out. It looks like it can probably just be taken apart by removing the screws, but I'm not sure what kind of seal it has on it.

[Miles]

Finally got everything setup.... I quickly realized that I was getting very little flow on my return pump (~210 gph), tonight I found a gate valve I forgot existed  and increased the flow to 500gph. I have another sensor on the pump feeding my GFO reactor and one on my ATO (this is mostly because I couldn't come up with a good place for another 1/2" sensor). My ATO hasn't run yet, so I guess we'll see how that goes in a next few days.

Below are a couple pictures of the setup and the Apex Fusion widgets.










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[lazylivin]

Love it!