Contacting Turbo’s Aquatics

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The best way to contact us is by opening up a Support Ticket – simply follow the instructions on the Ordering page

Opening a support ticket will automatically generate a confirmation email that will be sent from my support e-mail address.  You should receive this within a few minutes.  If you don’t get the message within 10 minutes, it’s possible that the email went to a Junk or Spam folder.  But even if it didn’t, that doesn’t mean future messages might not end up there!

Email providers are unpredictable.  We might send you an e-mail with only text (which will likely go through) but then an email that contains a link or an attachment might go to junk/spam – and trigger all future messages to go to junk as well!  Due to this issue, it’s always a good idea to search your e-mail provider + “safe senders” or “whitelist” on Google to see what procedure you can follow to make 100% sure that you are in full communication with us.  We recommend that you do this no matter what.

Please note: this is not just a problem with just me or my host.  This is a systematic issue: email providers are at war with spammers, and when their tools get hyper-aggressive due to the spammers adapting, innocent parties get trapped.  This is why you, as the consumer, have to be proactively whitelisting.  Sorry.  Blame spammers.

Here are step-by-step instructions for “whitelisting” us via the most common online email services:

Gmail

Microsoft(includes hotmail, live, outlook, q, msn, etc)

Yahoo

AOL

This is particularly important if you use any Microsoft email (hotmail, live, outlook, msn, and several others are all until the Microsoft umbrella), Yahoo email, Verizon email, as well as many others.  Gmail is generally pretty safe, but it’s better to whitelist whenever you do not have the option to disable junk mail filtering.

I highly recommend that you do not use any Macintosh-related account (apple, icloud, mac, me, etc).  Apple doesn’t give you the option to whitelist.  Please avoid using Apple email addresses with Turbo’s Aquatics Support.

You will want to add the domains turbosaquatics.com and (if you use the forum at all) algaescrubbing.com.  Please note that it is turbosaquatics, with two “s”s, notturboaquatics norturboaquatic.

Alternatively, you may contact me by establishing a user account on the Algae Scrubbing Forum, or if you are already a member of any of the following forums, you may contact me via PM / Conversation:

Algae Scrubbing – Turbo

Greater Iowa Reef Society – Turbo’s Aquatics

Reef2Reef – Floyd R Turbo

Reef Sanctuary – Floyd R Turbo

3Reef – Turbo’s Aquatics

Ultimate Reef – Turbo’s Aquatics

Returning LED fixtures

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If I request that you send a fixture back to me for service work, here is my recommended packing procedure.

For this example, I am using an L4 fixture.  The process is similar for the L2 and L8 fixtures. The intent is mainly to protect the potentiometer holders on the ends of each fixture, but also to protect the box from getting damaged by the heat sink.  If the heat sink is not adequately wrapped (and also packed rather snugly into a box) then it can rip through the box in shipping.

First, wrap the fixture in some cardboard.  I recommend getting this from USPS, because their Priority Mail boxes are free

Note: leave the cord(s) loose at this stage

If you are sending both fixtures, repeat for the other side

Sandwich the fixtures together.  In this examples, the tabs from the small flat rate box make for a convenient way of routing and protecting the cables.

Note: Try to route and secure the cables such that they are not rubbing up against the ends of the heat sink

Protecting the potentiometer from impact damage is important.

For this example, I took 2 pieces of large-diameter bubble wrap and folded them twice, and wrapped around the end of the fixture, then taped it to the box

Tape the fixtures together also

The next step is to protect the corners of the heat sinks.  Again, I use bubble wrap, but you could use foam or extra cardboard

If I have requested that you send the power supplies back as well, wrap the cords around the power supply & rubber band them, then wrap in bubble wrap.  Alternatively, you can put them inside a small flat-rate USPS box

Shipping: Once the items are prepared as shown above, you don’t need an oversized box for shipping.  They can be squeezed into whatever box you might have available.

If the box you are using has a lot of extra space, you will need to fill these voids to make sure the items don’t get slammed around in shipping.

You can use just about anything (newspaper, junk mail, bubble wrap, packing peanuts, etc) but the main rule is to pack it rather tightly.  Peanuts will break up and move around, so if you use peanuts, use a lot of them.  Paper/newspaper needs to be crumpled up tightly to make sure it doesn’t get compacted more in shipping.

As always, reach out to me if you have any questions!