Best investment for $100?

R

Ryandragon

Member
I have been reefing for a long time, ever since I was 13 years old. I've never own an ATO before so I don't know what to expect. However, yesterday when my ATO unit arrived, it was like Christmas all over again. This thing just made my life so much easier. No manually topping off and carrying buckets or refilling kalk bottle. I simply just fill my 5 gallon bucket with RODI, put in a semi full 1/4cup of kalk. Give it a good stir and leave it over night and it will last for a week. In my opinion, an ATO is the best investment I have ever made in this hobby.

There are horror stories how ATO go wrong and flood the whole house. If you take extra measures and redundancy for emergency shut off then it would never happen. I have 1 float switch that is submerge (main switch for water level). The other switch is 2 inches above the main switch (emergency shut off when water touch it). That emergency switch is bone dry all the time so when water touch it, it will shut off the ato. Also I'm using a Aqualifter pump and set the maximum fill time to 7 minutes, which is a little too long but I'll fix it sometimes next week. When I have the Apex controller, then I can use the pH shut off features as well if the ato were to fail and keep dumping kalk into my system continuously.
Overall, I just wanted to say that the ATO is a great investment. It will not fail you if you keep up with maintenance and use several redundancy checkpoints. Thanks for reading. :D
 
Do you have it hooked directly to your RODI ? I think that's the only way you could flood your house?

I use the Smart ATO with a 25 gal tank full of Kalk solution. It's probably enough to fry my tank if the whole 25 gallons were dumped at once, but I have grown to trust my Smart ATO over the last two years.

I used to use a six gallon jug gravity fed into my sump using a float valve. It's just what I had around, so it's what I used. I did feel like this was a risk, but it was only 6 gallons going into my 220 if it did dump. Although, six gallons was a pain because it only lasted 1-2 days.

So in summary after my babbling, yes, and ATO is a key component of my system. It also allows me to go on a 5 day vacation an not worry (that much) about my tank.
 
great pick up Ryan ;)

IMO regardless of the size tank, NO SW tank should be run without an ATO...
like Sawdonkey, I have mine in a dedicated 7gal jug which my sump can handle in the unlikely event the ATO malfunctions....my Tunze 3155 has a sensor to add water and a float valve to kill the water supply if it raises too high...

now go enjoy having one less thing to worry about....:thumb:
 
ATO is as important as the tank itself! I was so pissed at myself for going a year without when I first started.
 
Sawdonkey said:
Do you have it hooked directly to your RODI ? I think that's the only way you could flood your house?

I use the Smart ATO with a 25 gal tank full of Kalk solution. It's probably enough to fry my tank if the whole 25 gallons were dumped at once, but I have grown to trust my Smart ATO over the last two years.

I used to use a six gallon jug gravity fed into my sump using a float valve. It's just what I had around, so it's what I used. I did feel like this was a risk, but it was only 6 gallons going into my 220 if it did dump. Although, six gallons was a pain because it only lasted 1-2 days.

So in summary after my babbling, yes, and ATO is a key component of my system. It also allows me to go on a 5 day vacation an not worry (that much) about my tank.
Click to expand...

I've know better not to hook it directly to the RODI unit haha. I have a 5 gallon bucket reservoir next to the sump. It's a 65 gallon. So even if it were to malfunction and keep adding more kalk it will stop after 7 minutes. Or hit the emergency shut off switch which ever comes first. The Aqualifter is such a small and slow pump it will not do damage in 7 minutes. If that make sense! Haha but yea very nice investment. I will replace the float switch every 6 months or 8 months depending on how bad the build up is. 15 bucks for piece of mine is a good trade off haha
 
Just an FYI on ATO failure modes...

I like the ATOs from autotopoff.com, I've had one running for over 10 years without issue on my older tank. They're cheap, simple, and easy to repair (replace float switches, etc)

I just got a new unit for the Biocube 29 I'm building. The other day, I was changing some water and got lazy and just dumped the water in (only a cleaning crew in there). Some of it splashed over the back and onto the wall and floor. Wiped that up and didnt think much else about it.

2 hours later I'm running errands and my wife asks me why the circuit breaker is tripped. ...Then she starts rage-texting about water all over and dripping into the basement.

Turns out water dripped down along the cords and got into the little relay box and shorted the relay such that it was stuck in an on position. Luckily (?) it dripped right into a junction box on the same circuit as the outlet and tripped the GFCI breaker and didn't fill so far that my salinity went down TOO much (reached 1.019).

While I plan to be REAL CAREFUL about not letting that happen again, I also opened the relay box, coated the terminals in di-electric grease (after the water dried), and sealed the box with silicon as best I could.
 
So reading through this, I've been there and done that when it comes to flooding the "NEWLY FISNISHED" basement and lowering my salinity to approximately 1.000. Here is what I came up with..

1) Use a approved food tub (not one previously filled with fertilizer!)
2) Cut a hole in the tub, near the top, and plumb a bulkhead.
3) plumb bulk head / pvc directly into floor drain
4) plumb the RODI unit directly into the tub.
5) Turn on RODI and let it run.. If you forget to turn it off, the water will drain directly into the floor drain and the sump will push it up and out. BUT you WILL not flood your house when filling RODI

As for my float valve, I use the Hydor Smart system. Yes it beeps when there is too much water in the sump, but i've muffled it enough that it doesn't annoy me all the time. I've not had 1 issue since installing my system like this.
 
mleinart said:
Just an FYI on ATO failure modes...

I like the ATOs from autotopoff.com, I've had one running for over 10 years without issue on my older tank. They're cheap, simple, and easy to repair (replace float switches, etc)

I just got a new unit for the Biocube 29 I'm building. The other day, I was changing some water and got lazy and just dumped the water in (only a cleaning crew in there). Some of it splashed over the back and onto the wall and floor. Wiped that up and didnt think much else about it.

2 hours later I'm running errands and my wife asks me why the circuit breaker is tripped. ...Then she starts rage-texting about water all over and dripping into the basement.

Turns out water dripped down along the cords and got into the little relay box and shorted the relay such that it was stuck in an on position. Luckily (?) it dripped right into a junction box on the same circuit as the outlet and tripped the GFCI breaker and didn't fill so far that my salinity went down TOO much (reached 1.019).

While I plan to be REAL CAREFUL about not letting that happen again, I also opened the relay box, coated the terminals in di-electric grease (after the water dried), and sealed the box with silicon as best I could.
Click to expand...
My ato breaker box is outside of the stand and I ensure nothing can splash into it or drip into it. Good thing your ato stop before it make the salinity go way down!
 
zportell said:
So reading through this, I've been there and done that when it comes to flooding the "NEWLY FISNISHED" basement and lowering my salinity to approximately 1.000. Here is what I came up with..

1) Use a approved food tub (not one previously filled with fertilizer!)
2) Cut a hole in the tub, near the top, and plumb a bulkhead.
3) plumb bulk head / pvc directly into floor drain
4) plumb the RODI unit directly into the tub.
5) Turn on RODI and let it run.. If you forget to turn it off, the water will drain directly into the floor drain and the sump will push it up and out. BUT you WILL not flood your house when filling RODI

As for my float valve, I use the Hydor Smart system. Yes it beeps when there is too much water in the sump, but i've muffled it enough that it doesn't annoy me all the time. I've not had 1 issue since installing my system like this.
Click to expand...

I think the best way is to refill the resevoir every week instead of hooking it up directly to an RODI unit. When you hook it up to an RODI unit, you let the ato access to basically unlimited supply of water. Which is dangerous if something were to go wrong when you're not home. I know you have safe guards in place but those safeguards might fail too. When you have a reservoir of only 5 gallon of water (which is what I use and it last me for a week on my 65g) and something malfunction then only 5 gallon would be pumped into the sump. I know my sump can handle an extra 10 gallon so there would be no overflow. The extra 5 gallons will lower the salinity but not that drastically compare to unlimited supply of RODI water. That's just my 2 cents, but everybody runs their tank differently. If it isn't broke, don't fix it. lol
 
Ryandragon said:
I think the best way is to refill the resevoir every week instead of hooking it up directly to an RODI unit. When you hook it up to an RODI unit, you let the ato access to basically unlimited supply of water. Which is dangerous if something were to go wrong when you're not home. I know you have safe guards in place but those safeguards might fail too. When you have a reservoir of only 5 gallon of water (which is what I use and it last me for a week on my 65g) and something malfunction then only 5 gallon would be pumped into the sump. I know my sump can handle an extra 10 gallon so there would be no overflow. The extra 5 gallons will lower the salinity but not that drastically compare to unlimited supply of RODI water. That's just my 2 cents, but everybody runs their tank differently. If it isn't broke, don't fix it. lol
Click to expand...


I think you misread or I am interpreting your response wrong... Either way, just so there isn't any confusion I am including a picture of what I meant to say.

View attachment 12613

You can see that I have installed a bulkhead into the top of the container. It's about 3-inches down from the top. It's plumbed to drain into the basement floor drain. If i forget to turn off my RODI system, the excess goes into the drain and the ejector pump in the drain pushes it out of the house. As for filling the Sump, It's typical.. The switch is in the sump. When water gets low, a small pump inside the RODI reservoir kicks on, fills the sump and then turns off. Since I am using the Hydor ATO, I have not had to replace any pieces, nor has the ATO failed since having it - approximately 1.5 years.

Now, some say that it's a waste of water if I forget to turn it off.. I say they are right. However, flooding my basement and having to deal with that mess is more costly than a couple of hours of wasted water.
 
zportell said:
I think you misread or I am interpreting your response wrong... Either way, just so there isn't any confusion I am including a picture of what I meant to say.

View attachment 12613

You can see that I have installed a bulkhead into the top of the container. It's about 3-inches down from the top. It's plumbed to drain into the basement floor drain. If i forget to turn off my RODI system, the excess goes into the drain and the ejector pump in the drain pushes it out of the house. As for filling the Sump, It's typical.. The switch is in the sump. When water gets low, a small pump inside the RODI reservoir kicks on, fills the sump and then turns off. Since I am using the Hydor ATO, I have not had to replace any pieces, nor has the ATO failed since having it - approximately 1.5 years.

Now, some say that it's a waste of water if I forget to turn it off.. I say they are right. However, flooding my basement and having to deal with that mess is more costly than a couple of hours of wasted water.
Click to expand...

Now I get what you are doing. The set up looks good. Unfortunately my tank is on the second floor so I don't have the pleasure of having a drain pipe right next to my tank. But if my tank were to be in the basement then I would definitely have a set up like yours but with a float switch for the RODI. So it'll shut off when your fresh water reservoir is filled!
 
Best investment for $100 is whatever makes ur life easier!! I like to use the Tunze 3155.. What a great ATO. Will never go back to JBJ or any of that other JUNK !
 
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