Correct re the video re Ryan - one of my subs flagged it to me and I watched it before they took it down. It only had a few thousand views from memory but plenty of people still saw it and it's weird to me that they've tried to pretend it didn't happen. Anyway, enjoyed listening to your perspective - good vid.
Thanks for commenting! Completely agree and I do not think this is something you’d make up either. It does seem like they’re trying to keep it low for some reason. Time will certainly tell.
Venture capital is not customer friendly or oriented, they’re about short term profits for their investors. I have first hand experience with VC taking over (I’m in healthcare) and it’s not pretty. My fear is BRS’s core mission and original goals will be sacrificed for fast $ gains, and we as reefers (much like patients) will lose in the end. Hope I’m wrong on this one…
I completely agree and I hope doing videos like this will help gain some attention and prevent that. If not, it will at least help generate and create awareness.
"Venture capital" or "publically traded" companies customers are still people like me or you, but its when we "invest" we get a return. Thats where our retirements/401ks etc get their value.
BRS is more about marketing and selling overpriced products for taking care of reef tanks. I don't use the Neptune systems no more as they are too expensive, and makes the system too complex. Their tutorial videos are great but I found that the best way to keep a reef tank is to be patient and keep things simple.
I started buying local again, and realize its actually the same price and in my case its delivered same or next day. Theres a small store called clear Choice Aquatics in NJ that does local delivery in my area.
That is awesome! Yes I have been purchasing more locally to now as well. Still trying to get my LFS to stock Hydros but I think I’m getting closer to that :)
I have been slowly migrating to Hydros myself and will not be replacing any Neptune or Ecotech gear as I go forward. I've got a 550 peninsula display and a 330 frag system along with QT's and observation tanks. I never bough into Radion's and wouldn't have any Ecotech pumps, if at the time there was something equivalent. But I've got thousands of dollars of Neptune products. I'm betting Ryan is under a noncompete now. Hey, he got paid. I don't blame him for taking the money, just don't smile and tell me the shit you're feeding me tastes good. This hobby has gotten more expensive since both covid and the Bertram Capital acquisition of BRS. When Aperture/Bertram bought two of the most expensive product lines in Neptune & Ecotech you had to know things would be going down hill from there. The writing wasn't just on the wall anymore, it was a bold print popup for all to see. No one should have been surprised that the competing products were cut. Why would any company help promote their competitor? I'm glad to see there are other companies like CoralVue that haven't gotten sucked into all the cash being thrown around, because you know they tried to buy them too.
Won a competition with BRS on TH-cam for about £600 of equipment a few years back, i was over the moon as i was going through extreme ill health and desperately needed a boost......only they then refused to ship it to England despite not stating it was US only i was devastated and haven't watched or read anything by them since as it just brings it all back
I now own that hydros 4 that Jason internally tested before selling it. After testing out the hydros system at BRS they broke the tank down and it was sold used to someone that worked there. He stored it then sold it to me and I then stored it for a year before setting it up on my current tank. I hate that BRS that is not far from me used to be a wealth of knowledge and was impartial because they didn’t own and of the brands they sold and now they only sell stuff they own. You can’t trust them to be impartial on their reviews anymore.😢
Hopefully all the work and dreams Ryan put into starting/growing BRS into what it was, has financially paid off for him with VC coming in. He can move on and do something else, I'm sure.
BRS “core beliefs” went out the window years ago. The drive to increase profits and market share eclipsed dedication to their customers AND staff. The people who built their entire business. The acquisition of BRS by Aperture was likely the impetus of most of what we see now but that slide towards their current state began many months(years?) before. Quality of products fell off well before the sales of the COVID boom faded. The names of those involved in this decent are mentioned in the video.
I got back into the hobby about 3 years ago. Brs was my number one channel for knowledge. But once the merger happened. They push selling stuff over the truth. I never watch anything of there’s now and I really never buy anything from them anymore. The merger in my eyes wrecked brs and what they are. Big company is doing what a big company will do.
I am not sure I would thank Ryan for what he has done. He sold BRS and made sure Neptune and EcoTech were acquired as well. All of the people who worked for these companies and claimed this would be a positive thing for the hobby were paid to leave and it seems paid to not talk about it. Ryan will be speaking at RAP NY soon. I wish I could be in the room and question his thoughts on what has become of these companies.
I'll be attending his talk. Really curious how the Q+A goes. Personally I want to thank him for all the older educational videos he put out, as they got me into the hobby and taught me everything I needed to set up my 60 cube.
Care to enlighten us all as to how you are/were privy to what went on, or what Ryan did or didn't do during the negotiations with the VC firm?? We all know the outcome, but you're speaking as if you had some insider knowledge.
@@jongordon3507 I saw the video. They said nothing about the inner workings of the VC deal, which was the whole point of my comment. No one on the outside knows the details....everyone is just speculating.
Yes, it was something that was predicted and now we see it’s getting to the end. Their products are garbage. The customer service is crap 30+ years in the hobby. I build a lot of tanks sell a lot of product and I’m staring my customers away from buying anything from these guys I guess the radian lights is what’s left to be blown up in our faces too this is what happened when a company takes all of a successful company that had its heart and soul in it Hobbies loved their products. It was amazing for those years. The moment these people got their hands on the company destroy it. There’s no love anymore. It’s just money so how is it gonna be successful? I can’t wait for the day to see these bastards go under and maybe somebody that has your heart and soul in it will buy out these companies and resurrect them somehow, this has been a major blow hobby that’s why we have to look for alternative measures last year. They had so much increases online. If you look to even buy lock line, they don’t even have enough in stock for you to buy 20 pieces. Margins are slim for businesses while they make the profits.
I couldn’t agree more. Back in the good ol’ BRS days they were a one stop shop for everything. They even provided discount codes to help me save 10-20% on larger orders years back. That never happens any more.
I was thinking of switching over to Hydros, but I have Ecotech powerheads and lights and not sure how to use them with Hydros. Do you just plug them into the hydros power strips? It's been the last thing I need to find out before making the switch over.
Ecotech unfortunately won’t integrate with Hydros but you could plug them into something like an XP8 and power them on/off. I use XR30s and just control them via Mobius.
The wave engine v2 supports the older wireless vortech pumps (non modius). You just need to add a wireless chip to the wave engine. I switched a few months ago after my 13 month old apex v3 stopped working after a power outage. I sent it to neptune and from initial contact to receiving the apex back from them it was 3 weeks. I can't not have a controller on my tank for 3 weeks so after 2 weeks I went all in on hydros from a local store (shout out to clear Choice aquatics). It's a learning curve but in the end it's better.
Brs is really going down the drain . Their inventory is not like what it used to be . Lot of products are discontinued and it’s hard to find replacement parts
@@kingofrannoch I kinda wonder if the parent company literally increased the MAP price so that way when they “had sales” people would just buy them at the ordinary asking price.
My apex does the same thing disconnects from fusion like 4 times a day not as bad as you,but when I want to check and I can’t it’s annoying. New sub here 👋
The two comments I see a ton lately are pop up sales, which is the way of marketing across retail since Covid. Similar to Kohls, everything is always on sale. The second is selling other brands, its an interesting one cause you dont go to Chevy to buy a Ford. If it was my and I was buying a hydros, I would get it from the source, Coral Vue.
Thanks for your comments. The pop up sales certainly could just be marketing. But as for CoralVue, they’re more of a distribution company and supply their inventory to resellers like BRS, SW Aquarium, etc. they do have a small store presence but they only sell parts or devices that have damaged boxes, etc. you won’t be able to purchase a full Hydros setup directly from them.
BRS has done so much for the hobby from an education standpoint, I don’t mind just shopping elsewhere for competing products I wouldn’t go anything but Hydros anyway. I don’t like how bulky Neptune stuff is. All these companies do some good things and bad things and you just have to cherry pick what you like and discard the rest
I’m really disenchanted w BRS. It’s fine to push your own products but they’ve moved from selling the best items for the right reasons to selling their own things for selfish reasons.
Weird, but a buddy of mine and myself just ordered a few products from BRS a few weeks back. He had a bit of a delay getting an answer for his question. Myself, i asked a question too (Private Question) and until today i got no answer. By the way, we are both living abroad, in Asia. So yeah customer service has gone down!
If they didn’t respond to your last email that’s likely just someone forgot to message you back. I’ve had times where I typed a whole email and forgot to hit send. I wouldn’t discredit any company cause they forgot to respond to one message.
Sad to see a once great company grown from a basement with a great following turn to a giant infomercial sales ad. I've commented on other forums about the constant weekly sales on map items. Those only happened once or twice a year. Covid shipping issues caused alot of inflated prices and now they are stuck with a bunch of overpriced stock that they can't get rid of! Recipe for bankruptcy
Well I can see that. I have had really terrible experiences with dealing with them via email. I have asked very basic questions about dimensions of products or if a product will work with another product and get nothing but we don’t know or I’ll have to ask tech. And then no one gets back to you. Seems like there is no personal connection between brs and the company anymore. Just pushing really expensive products that are made like cheap garbage.
You certainly should feel unhappy your Neptune issue was not resolved but much of the rest of this is just the same negative trolling and conspiracy being thrown around these days. I have sold Aquarium controllers for 20 years all the major brands and the reality is they all have issues from time to time as you will also find out with Hydros. I used to sell GHL I dropped it in the end probably for the same reason as BRS it is a low-margin product, arcane in operation and with way too many SKU's mostly of which you sell once every couple of years. As for laying off good people, Terrence was a great advocate for Neptune but he never was a team player unless it was Team Terrence. Ryan still seems to be making guest appearances at events talking to hobbyists and decompressing after what I tend to think is simply creator burnout loads of You Tubers suffer from it. I also like the idea that in the good old days, it was non-corporate just Ryan and Randy sitting about going shall we go packs some orders nah let's play with the tanks. It was always corporate you dont get to sell if you run a loss-making basket case of a company. Good journalism needs to investigate and be more than rehashing the work of trolls.
Thanks for your reply and you are right, they all do have their issues. I understand a factory reset fixes it but for the price this equipment costs, there should also be a better way. If a full factory reset is needed to fix Hydros, I have previous saved configurations in Hydros and I can be back up/ running. GHL also supports this too. Apex does not. As for my other comments - all I did was speak on how I feel. That way new reefers coming to the hobby has another point of view to base their decisions on. A controller is quite an investment of money.
They are focused on selling their own brands because they aren’t making money on their 3rd party brands . They also limit their market by not shipping abroad… crazy
I think apex and all the sister companies are garbage. Little do people know people on the Internet don't have to legally disclose they're getting paid for a sponsorship or review. I personally will not be buying anything from brs anymore, dollar voting is key. I'm not the biggest fan of corporations screwing people over. Thanks for making this video public!
BRS did a fair well video for him. He helps assist with another TH-cam channel related to weapons. I found it before but I cannot remember what’s it’s called now.
This was a very well researched discussion thank u. FWIW and without overthinking it too much I think it comes down to buy the equipment that fits your needs and from the vendor you trust. It's no secret that Bertam Capital who owns BRS also owns Neptune and a host of other companies in the Mobius ecosystem. My personal choice is to go with the best product out there at my price point and ATM thats CoralVue / Hydros. I'm waiting for the Maven since I don't have a controller but hey I only have a IM 40 AIO so probably not needed anyway. At scale, maybe I would go with GHL to have one ecosystem for everything but who knows, not there yet.
I remember Ryan’s last interview with Than from tidal gardens.. it was his the last appearance before his “announcement”. Something seemed off with him. No enthusiasm, talking drab and lazy. Something is clearly going on behind the scenes with brs.
Ya. I had the opportunity to speak with Ryan at RAP NY while I was there. He did confirm to me he’s taking a 12 month break from BRS. Unfortunately we did not get it recorded. A friend of mine was running his twitch stream at the time and caught part of Ryan and I talking. He still has to go through the stream tho but the voices won’t be there because I was like 20 ft away when it was running.
As you know I am a apex user and also work in tech. Purely from a technical point of viee the product is s vastly out dated model for software. The hardware imho is good. I am watching people leave this product daily. After the recent rash of bad updates littersly destroting units I find myself wishing I had gone a different direction.
Controllers are expensive and a big investment. Once you decide on one you’re usually trapped due to cost. That’s why I put this video together hoping others see an alternative way. Especially new reefers getting into the hobby.
One question, you said at the state of the video they announced they were no longer carrying Hydros and GHL. Didn't it just happen quietly? Was there an actual announcement? I used to listen in on everything that was going on with these companies, but no longer do.
There was never an official announcement but I did speak with someone on BRS support and it was confirmed. I was told these were decisions made out of their control which makes since.
I agree. I've had issues with a few of their products, wav pumps, and dos pumps mostly. I just had to repair trident, the magnetic stirrer failed. I had network issues in the beginning, but after changing my modem and router, the network has been stable for a few years now. Ecotech is junk as well. The g5 lights are horrible, and their vectra return pumps are worse. I had seven of the lights, and they constantly disconnected from mobius. I went through two L1 pumps in a year and a half. Three month cleaning schedule, and they would fail to restart out of nowhere. I replaced the second one with a dcp 20000 and ran it for three half years before putting the spare in and saving the used one as a backup. I'm going to start replacing my neptune with hydros or build a custom PLC system. I'll leave some of the neptune systems in place as a stand-alone system.
Correct re the video re Ryan - one of my subs flagged it to me and I watched it before they took it down. It only had a few thousand views from memory but plenty of people still saw it and it's weird to me that they've tried to pretend it didn't happen. Anyway, enjoyed listening to your perspective - good vid.
Thanks for commenting! Completely agree and I do not think this is something you’d make up either. It does seem like they’re trying to keep it low for some reason. Time will certainly tell.
What was the video re: Ryan?
@@DarrylZuk Search "A Sad Farewell | The Prestige Reef Dork Show Ep 39". Look at the pinned comment for the time stamp
@DarrylZuk I missed it too. I'm sure someone downloaded it and can re-up it.
I didn’t know they took it down. I watched it live that day.
Venture capital is not customer friendly or oriented, they’re about short term profits for their investors. I have first hand experience with VC taking over (I’m in healthcare) and it’s not pretty. My fear is BRS’s core mission and original goals will be sacrificed for fast $ gains, and we as reefers (much like patients) will lose in the end. Hope I’m wrong on this one…
I completely agree and I hope doing videos like this will help gain some attention and prevent that. If not, it will at least help generate and create awareness.
"Venture capital" or "publically traded" companies customers are still people like me or you, but its when we "invest" we get a return. Thats where our retirements/401ks etc get their value.
BRS is more about marketing and selling overpriced products for taking care of reef tanks. I don't use the Neptune systems no more as they are too expensive, and makes the system too complex. Their tutorial videos are great but I found that the best way to keep a reef tank is to be patient and keep things simple.
Nothing wrong with keeping it simple. Absolutely nothing wrong with that approach at all.
I started buying local again, and realize its actually the same price and in my case its delivered same or next day. Theres a small store called clear Choice Aquatics in NJ that does local delivery in my area.
That is awesome! Yes I have been purchasing more locally to now as well. Still trying to get my LFS to stock Hydros but I think I’m getting closer to that :)
I have been slowly migrating to Hydros myself and will not be replacing any Neptune or Ecotech gear as I go forward. I've got a 550 peninsula display and a 330 frag system along with QT's and observation tanks. I never bough into Radion's and wouldn't have any Ecotech pumps, if at the time there was something equivalent. But I've got thousands of dollars of Neptune products.
I'm betting Ryan is under a noncompete now. Hey, he got paid. I don't blame him for taking the money, just don't smile and tell me the shit you're feeding me tastes good. This hobby has gotten more expensive since both covid and the Bertram Capital acquisition of BRS. When Aperture/Bertram bought two of the most expensive product lines in Neptune & Ecotech you had to know things would be going down hill from there. The writing wasn't just on the wall anymore, it was a bold print popup for all to see. No one should have been surprised that the competing products were cut. Why would any company help promote their competitor?
I'm glad to see there are other companies like CoralVue that haven't gotten sucked into all the cash being thrown around, because you know they tried to buy them too.
I couldn’t agree more!!
Won a competition with BRS on TH-cam for about £600 of equipment a few years back, i was over the moon as i was going through extreme ill health and desperately needed a boost......only they then refused to ship it to England despite not stating it was US only i was devastated and haven't watched or read anything by them since as it just brings it all back
I’m sorry you went through that. I hope everything is better now health wise for you.
I now own that hydros 4 that Jason internally tested before selling it. After testing out the hydros system at BRS they broke the tank down and it was sold used to someone that worked there. He stored it then sold it to me and I then stored it for a year before setting it up on my current tank. I hate that BRS that is not far from me used to be a wealth of knowledge and was impartial because they didn’t own and of the brands they sold and now they only sell stuff they own. You can’t trust them to be impartial on their reviews anymore.😢
Yes I agree and that is what made them the best.
Hopefully all the work and dreams Ryan put into starting/growing BRS into what it was, has financially paid off for him with VC coming in. He can move on and do something else, I'm sure.
I hope so too. He has certainly given a lot of time and energy to the hobby.
He is doing just fine. His years of hard work and hard selling definitely paid off!
I also heard that Ryan is leaving BRS for personal reasons, but I don't know if it's true or not. Only time will tell.
You are right. Only time will tell!
BRS “core beliefs” went out the window years ago. The drive to increase profits and market share eclipsed dedication to their customers AND staff. The people who built their entire business.
The acquisition of BRS by Aperture was likely the impetus of most of what we see now but that slide towards their current state began many months(years?) before. Quality of products fell off well before the sales of the COVID boom faded. The names of those involved in this decent are mentioned in the video.
The company has deftly changed. That is for sure!
I got back into the hobby about 3 years ago. Brs was my number one channel for knowledge. But once the merger happened. They push selling stuff over the truth. I never watch anything of there’s now and I really never buy anything from them anymore. The merger in my eyes wrecked brs and what they are. Big company is doing what a big company will do.
I do not think I could have said it any better.
I am not sure I would thank Ryan for what he has done. He sold BRS and made sure Neptune and EcoTech were acquired as well. All of the people who worked for these companies and claimed this would be a positive thing for the hobby were paid to leave and it seems paid to not talk about it. Ryan will be speaking at RAP NY soon. I wish I could be in the room and question his thoughts on what has become of these companies.
I'll be attending his talk. Really curious how the Q+A goes. Personally I want to thank him for all the older educational videos he put out, as they got me into the hobby and taught me everything I needed to set up my 60 cube.
I’m planning to be at RAP NY so I will try my best to ask him if given the opportunity.
Care to enlighten us all as to how you are/were privy to what went on, or what Ryan did or didn't do during the negotiations with the VC firm?? We all know the outcome, but you're speaking as if you had some insider knowledge.
@@billydanzz no insider knowledge. If you want to you can go back to the video of Ryan and Terrance sitting down together to make the announcement.
@@jongordon3507 I saw the video. They said nothing about the inner workings of the VC deal, which was the whole point of my comment. No one on the outside knows the details....everyone is just speculating.
Yes, it was something that was predicted and now we see it’s getting to the end. Their products are garbage. The customer service is crap 30+ years in the hobby. I build a lot of tanks sell a lot of product and I’m staring my customers away from buying anything from these guys I guess the radian lights is what’s left to be blown up in our faces too this is what happened when a company takes all of a successful company that had its heart and soul in it Hobbies loved their products. It was amazing for those years. The moment these people got their hands on the company destroy it. There’s no love anymore. It’s just money so how is it gonna be successful? I can’t wait for the day to see these bastards go under and maybe somebody that has your heart and soul in it will buy out these companies and resurrect them somehow, this has been a major blow hobby that’s why we have to look for alternative measures last year. They had so much increases online. If you look to even buy lock line, they don’t even have enough in stock for you to buy 20 pieces. Margins are slim for businesses while they make the profits.
I couldn’t agree more. Back in the good ol’ BRS days they were a one stop shop for everything. They even provided discount codes to help me save 10-20% on larger orders years back. That never happens any more.
I was thinking of switching over to Hydros, but I have Ecotech powerheads and lights and not sure how to use them with Hydros. Do you just plug them into the hydros power strips? It's been the last thing I need to find out before making the switch over.
Ecotech unfortunately won’t integrate with Hydros but you could plug them into something like an XP8 and power them on/off. I use XR30s and just control them via Mobius.
The wave engine v2 supports the older wireless vortech pumps (non modius). You just need to add a wireless chip to the wave engine. I switched a few months ago after my 13 month old apex v3 stopped working after a power outage. I sent it to neptune and from initial contact to receiving the apex back from them it was 3 weeks. I can't not have a controller on my tank for 3 weeks so after 2 weeks I went all in on hydros from a local store (shout out to clear Choice aquatics). It's a learning curve but in the end it's better.
@@REEFHUB-Official I do the same and the time loss bug in Mobius is so bad I'm probably going to sell my Radions.
Brs is really going down the drain . Their inventory is not like what it used to be . Lot of products are discontinued and it’s hard to find replacement parts
Yah I agree. it’s not what it used to be.
Not to mention expensive. Aquarium lights for 999.99😂
@@kingofrannoch I kinda wonder if the parent company literally increased the MAP price so that way when they “had sales” people would just buy them at the ordinary asking price.
My apex does the same thing disconnects from fusion like 4 times a day not as bad as you,but when I want to check and I can’t it’s annoying. New sub here 👋
It is I agree and thank you :) 🙏
The two comments I see a ton lately are pop up sales, which is the way of marketing across retail since Covid. Similar to Kohls, everything is always on sale. The second is selling other brands, its an interesting one cause you dont go to Chevy to buy a Ford. If it was my and I was buying a hydros, I would get it from the source, Coral Vue.
Thanks for your comments. The pop up sales certainly could just be marketing. But as for CoralVue, they’re more of a distribution company and supply their inventory to resellers like BRS, SW Aquarium, etc. they do have a small store presence but they only sell parts or devices that have damaged boxes, etc. you won’t be able to purchase a full Hydros setup directly from them.
BRS has done so much for the hobby from an education standpoint, I don’t mind just shopping elsewhere for competing products
I wouldn’t go anything but Hydros anyway. I don’t like how bulky Neptune stuff is.
All these companies do some good things and bad things and you just have to cherry pick what you like and discard the rest
I completely agree they have done so much for this hobby!
I’m really disenchanted w BRS. It’s fine to push your own products but they’ve moved from selling the best items for the right reasons to selling their own things for selfish reasons.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. It's important to highlight these shifts in companies' priorities.
I agree brs used to be info and unbiased goods now it’s just like everything wrong with corporate America
Very well said!
Weird, but a buddy of mine and myself just ordered a few products from BRS a few weeks back. He had a bit of a delay getting an answer for his question. Myself, i asked a question too (Private Question) and until today i got no answer. By the way, we are both living abroad, in Asia. So yeah customer service has gone down!
I’m sorry you experienced that. I hope putting videos up like this provides them feedback to improve but time will tell.
@@REEFHUB-Official honestly. I miss MarineDepot.
@@Baking_Baker Same here my friend!
If they didn’t respond to your last email that’s likely just someone forgot to message you back. I’ve had times where I typed a whole email and forgot to hit send. I wouldn’t discredit any company cause they forgot to respond to one message.
I’d like to agree with that but I did follow up on the issue and still never received a response back after a couple attempts on asking.
@@REEFHUB-Official in that case you are 1000% in the right. I agree with you that’s terrible customer service.
Sad to see a once great company grown from a basement with a great following turn to a giant infomercial sales ad. I've commented on other forums about the constant weekly sales on map items. Those only happened once or twice a year. Covid shipping issues caused alot of inflated prices and now they are stuck with a bunch of overpriced stock that they can't get rid of! Recipe for bankruptcy
I think this sums it up nicely.
I agree and feel there costumer service has gone to crap
Ya it used to not be like that. It’s a fight anymore.
Heard whispers Brs may be going under in the coming months 🤷🏼♂️
I hope this isn’t true but I have seen this mentioned a couple times now.
@@REEFHUB-OfficialI hope it’s true .they won’t last long trying to force you to buy their products
I've heard this as well.
Not going under but seeking protection from creditors while restructuring.
Well I can see that. I have had really terrible experiences with dealing with them via email. I have asked very basic questions about dimensions of products or if a product will work with another product and get nothing but we don’t know or I’ll have to ask tech. And then no one gets back to you. Seems like there is no personal connection between brs and the company anymore. Just pushing really expensive products that are made like cheap garbage.
You certainly should feel unhappy your Neptune issue was not resolved but much of the rest of this is just the same negative trolling and conspiracy being thrown around these days. I have sold Aquarium controllers for 20 years all the major brands and the reality is they all have issues from time to time as you will also find out with Hydros. I used to sell GHL I dropped it in the end probably for the same reason as BRS it is a low-margin product, arcane in operation and with way too many SKU's mostly of which you sell once every couple of years. As for laying off good people, Terrence was a great advocate for Neptune but he never was a team player unless it was Team Terrence. Ryan still seems to be making guest appearances at events talking to hobbyists and decompressing after what I tend to think is simply creator burnout loads of You Tubers suffer from it. I also like the idea that in the good old days, it was non-corporate just Ryan and Randy sitting about going shall we go packs some orders nah let's play with the tanks. It was always corporate you dont get to sell if you run a loss-making basket case of a company. Good journalism needs to investigate and be more than rehashing the work of trolls.
Thanks for your reply and you are right, they all do have their issues. I understand a factory reset fixes it but for the price this equipment costs, there should also be a better way. If a full factory reset is needed to fix Hydros, I have previous saved configurations in Hydros and I can be back up/ running. GHL also supports this too. Apex does not.
As for my other comments - all I did was speak on how I feel. That way new reefers coming to the hobby has another point of view to base their decisions on. A controller is quite an investment of money.
They are focused on selling their own brands because they aren’t making money on their 3rd party brands . They also limit their market by not shipping abroad… crazy
I deftly agree here!
I feel they are destroying three of the best brands in the industry and me personally wish they never merged .
I completely agree. I feel as if they operated better independently before the merger.
agreed! This statement is the truest thing!
I think apex and all the sister companies are garbage. Little do people know people on the Internet don't have to legally disclose they're getting paid for a sponsorship or review. I personally will not be buying anything from brs anymore, dollar voting is key. I'm not the biggest fan of corporations screwing people over. Thanks for making this video public!
No problem and thank you for sharing your input. I’ve been shopping else where myself too. Aquacave lately has been getting a bulk of my orders.
I ain’t seen Randy in a minute so I was always wondering where he’s at
BRS did a fair well video for him. He helps assist with another TH-cam channel related to weapons. I found it before but I cannot remember what’s it’s called now.
He left there as well. A3 Tactical
Preach, I'm sorry but I think Hydros has way better engineering, but I'm a tech nerd
This was a very well researched discussion thank u. FWIW and without overthinking it too much I think it comes down to buy the equipment that fits your needs and from the vendor you trust. It's no secret that Bertam Capital who owns BRS also owns Neptune and a host of other companies in the Mobius ecosystem. My personal choice is to go with the best product out there at my price point and ATM thats CoralVue / Hydros. I'm waiting for the Maven since I don't have a controller but hey I only have a IM 40 AIO so probably not needed anyway. At scale, maybe I would go with GHL to have one ecosystem for everything but who knows, not there yet.
Same here! I’m a tech nerd myself. I have a CCIE so playing with new gadgets has always been a weakness of mine :P
I posted this on reef2reef when Ai and Neptune were bought. Hahah
Thanks for sharing! I’ve been seeing it discussed in quite a few areas of social media as well.
I’ve had both and apex feels like a cheap toy vs the hydros. Give hydros a couple more years and I’m sure they will dominate the controller market
I completely agree. 👍
I remember Ryan’s last interview with Than from tidal gardens.. it was his the last appearance before his “announcement”. Something seemed off with him. No enthusiasm, talking drab and lazy. Something is clearly going on behind the scenes with brs.
Ya. I had the opportunity to speak with Ryan at RAP NY while I was there. He did confirm to me he’s taking a 12 month break from BRS. Unfortunately we did not get it recorded. A friend of mine was running his twitch stream at the time and caught part of Ryan and I talking. He still has to go through the stream tho but the voices won’t be there because I was like 20 ft away when it was running.
eh, someone else some come and take their spot. brs isn't anything special.
That is true!
Didn't Ryan start BRS?
Yes him and another person started BRS. You can see the original person who started it with him in earlier BRS videos they ever uploaded.
@@REEFHUB-Official I remember the first videos they uploaded back in like 2008-2009 or so.
So this is why my Marine Pure gems order got refunded a couple weeks ago? This sucks their videos were so informative
That I am not so sure if. I’m sorry 😞
As you know I am a apex user and also work in tech. Purely from a technical point of viee the product is s vastly out dated model for software. The hardware imho is good. I am watching people leave this product daily.
After the recent rash of bad updates littersly destroting units I find myself wishing I had gone a different direction.
Controllers are expensive and a big investment. Once you decide on one you’re usually trapped due to cost. That’s why I put this video together hoping others see an alternative way. Especially new reefers getting into the hobby.
screw BRS,i'll shop at aquacave or saltwater aquarium!!
Same here!!
BRS has changed in a not so pleasant way.
This is true!
One question, you said at the state of the video they announced they were no longer carrying Hydros and GHL. Didn't it just happen quietly? Was there an actual announcement? I used to listen in on everything that was going on with these companies, but no longer do.
There was never an official announcement but I did speak with someone on BRS support and it was confirmed. I was told these were decisions made out of their control which makes since.
Neptune apex is outdated overpriced controller 😂
Hopefully they see this video and take into consideration the feedback from the community.
Neptune is junk
I had to move away from it myself!
I agree. I've had issues with a few of their products, wav pumps, and dos pumps mostly. I just had to repair trident, the magnetic stirrer failed. I had network issues in the beginning, but after changing my modem and router, the network has been stable for a few years now. Ecotech is junk as well. The g5 lights are horrible, and their vectra return pumps are worse. I had seven of the lights, and they constantly disconnected from mobius. I went through two L1 pumps in a year and a half. Three month cleaning schedule, and they would fail to restart out of nowhere. I replaced the second one with a dcp 20000 and ran it for three half years before putting the spare in and saving the used one as a backup.
I'm going to start replacing my neptune with hydros or build a custom PLC system. I'll leave some of the neptune systems in place as a stand-alone system.
What do you expect when they are the same company as Neptune Apex….
Yeah. I just wish the merger would have bright better things versus where it’s ended up