holding tank

[Randy1]

What is a good choice of holding tank for ATO?

Thanks

[tebrown]

I use a 5 gallon bucket for my ATO. I wouldn't go much bigger than that because if your sensor/float fails, you don't want to dump 20+ gallons of fresh water into your salt water tank.

I have a 44 gallon Rubbermaid Brute trashcan that I fill with my RO/DI water. They are made with food safe plastic and are fairly inexpensive and come with a lid. (Also available in 32 gallon versions). I have a pump in it which I use to fill my 5 gallon bucket once a week (or so).

[Thefilterguys]

I use a 10 gallon tank drilled at the bottom which is filled with DI water once a week and gravity feeds into my sump by drip. I
have yet to setup one of our Reef Fanatic ATO controllers sorry to say.

Jim

[Randy1]

us plasitcs does have the rubbermaid brute in a 10 Gal. maybe I'll order one.

[Thefilterguys]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10571260#post10571260 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Thefilterguys
I use a 10 gallon tank drilled at the bottom which is filled with DI water once a week and gravity feeds into my sump by drip. I
have yet to setup one of our Reef Fanatic ATO controllers sorry to say.

Jim

Should have made this more clear it is a ten gallon aquarium drilled at the bottom I'm using.

Jim

[ShapeGSX]

I actually use a 2.3 gallon water storage container with a pressurized bladder inside and an automatic shutoff. When the tank is full, the auto-shutoff shuts off the RO.

Since the tank is pressurized, I don't need any pumps to top off the tank water.

I have a kalkwasser reactor plumbed directly into my RO/DI system. It has a solenoid that is activated by a float switch in my sump. When the solenoid is activated, the pressurized tank forces water into the kalk reactor, and that forces kalk into the sump until the float switch turns off the solenoid.

I actually have 2 float switches. One is slightly higher than the other as a failsafe. And the solenoid only gets power for 2 minutes via a digital lamp timer every couple hours as another failsafe.

The plus is that the whole system is completely automatic!

The minus is that the RO system runs whenever it wants to, so the RO membrane won't last as long without a flush after every operation. I suppose I could control water flow to the entire RO/DI system with another solenoid and timer to ensure that it only runs once a day, or every other day (2.3 gallons is plenty of water for one day). Then flush it afterwards (could make that automatic, too ;) ).

The filter guys sell a larger version of the tank that I have:
http://www.thefilterguys.biz/ro_systems.htm

My RO system was originally made for making drinking water, so it also included a sink tap. That is what I use to fill buckets for water changes. With the help from the filter guys, I ordered the parts to make it into a 4 stage RO/DI filter. The parts are coming today!