ATO question

[svynx]

I use an aqualifter on my main tank at home. I have a mantis tank at work, which now has an ATO. I bought another aqualifter, thinking it would work well. Here's the problem. I don't think it has enough power to pump the 3 feet vertical height. Right now I have the pump sitting on the stand, which means it's a little more than half the distance the water has to travel. Before I go and cut more tubing, would it be better to put the pump near the water source, so that it has to push more than it has to pull? Or should I just get a different pump?

[jason2459]

I know they don't have that much head height ability at all. Not sure what the limit actually is but here was a review that I read once about pushing it's limits.

From marine depot:

Comments: I passed on buying one of these for my ATO when setting up my reef tank because I was worried about the 30" lifting limit, because my freshwater resevoir was more than 30" below the top of my tank. I ended up using a large rio pump rated up to a 6ft head. The problem with this was that the pump would dump so much freshwater in at once, by the time the float sensor had reacted to the increasing water lever and shut the pump off, the water had risen to better than 1" above the float sensor. This caused moderate swings in salinity, from the hyposaline environment of just after the ATO refilling, to the hypersaline environment of just before the value would turn on the pump. This was not ideal for the tanks' inhabitants, and made dialing in the salinity a pain. Then I read on one of the reef forums that aqualifters may only PULL water up ~30" through the intake side, but they are much better at pushing the water up and away on the output side. And even if they were not better at pushing water, you can still pull water from 30" below the aqualifter and push it 30" above, making the pump effective at moving water up to 60" vertically. So, because these pumps were only $20 I gave it a try and it worked beautifully. The aqualifter rests on a shelf in my tank's cabinet and pulls water from the bottom of the resevoir up to the pump (about 2ft) and then pushes it the rest of the way up and over the rim of the tank (another 2-3 ft). Now the ATO tops off much more slowly and my salinity is quite stable. I am very pleased with this product and would recommend it to anyone for this application.
Yes, I would recommend this product to my friends.

[svynx]

Thanks Jason. I'm used to the ATO on my home tank, where the actual vertical height is only about 6". That pump flows quite nicely. I knew that the 3' height would make things different, but I didn't know how different. I'm going from a strong stream at home to a fast drip at work.