When is it beneficial to have an auto top-off system?

[ECU_Pirate]

Are there any factors it depends on?

[Centralreefs]

It's always beneficial. Stable salinity is pretty important and the ease of letting a system top the water off for you is nice.

[Kayvon]

Not only will it keep parameters stable, but it will also keep your water level stable for things like your pumps and skimmer.

[Alfrareef]

Always beneficial for everyone.

[five.five-six]

Until it floods your house.

[Alfrareef]

Until it floods your house.



Always a matter of volume calculation. My sump can stand the full ATO volume in case something wrong happens. The salinity will go down, but the floor stays dry!

[mcgyvr]

All saltwater systems will loose water due to evaporation..
The salt does not evaporate... (<--this is important to know)
As that happens the salinity in the tank increases.. (less water.. same amount of salt = higher salinity)
Stability in all parameters is key to a successful tank..

Fresh water needs to be added back routinely to account for that evaporation..
You can either do that daily or hourly or whatever manually or you can have a sensor/pump/reservoir to do that for you..
Your choice..

Some "redundancy/failsafes" need to be thought about.. Most off the shelf ATO systems have dual sensors or timers,etc.. to give some level of safety should one sensor fail or stick on too long or whatever..

[ggenung]

Right! When you automate something, you must try and consider all the things that could go wrong. You need a shut off to work, where your RO/DI feeds your reservoir. What if it fails? Where will the water go? Is there an alarm? Having a small reservoir is a good idea, but what if the reservoir keeps refilling after it pumps out continuously. Some setups have an automatic shutoff if the transfer pump stays on too long. This could be programmed into a controller. A Reef tank is where almost always, sooner or later, "What ever can go wrong, will go wrong." If only I could get paid for all my mistakes.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[ECU_Pirate]

All saltwater systems will loose water due to evaporation..
The salt does not evaporate... (<--this is important to know)
As that happens the salinity in the tank increases.. (less water.. same amount of salt = higher salinity)
Stability in all parameters is key to a successful tank..

Fresh water needs to be added back routinely to account for that evaporation..
You can either do that daily or hourly or whatever manually or you can have a sensor/pump/reservoir to do that for you..
Your choice..

Some "redundancy/failsafes" need to be thought about.. Most off the shelf ATO systems have dual sensors or timers,etc.. to give some level of safety should one sensor fail or stick on too long or whatever..

OK, this is good to know and makes a lot of sense. Do most folks that do it manually do it daily, or how often? How time consuming is the process and as a beginner how likely am I to screw it up?

[ggenung]

Well, I make my RO/DI water and then have a switch and a light that tells me my sump is low. Then I pump makeup water manually. Had a pretty good ATO, but electronics got wet and it quit working. Even if none is required, you should check your water level at least once a day.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Greybeard]

I can't imagine a marine aquarium without one. Salinity would fluctuate way more than I'd be comfortable with, and carrying buckets of water around sux :)

Safety: All mechanical devices fail... plan so that yours fails without taking the tank out with it!

Reservoir small enough so that dumping the entire thing into the tank is not going to have much of an impact, on either volume or salinity.

Redundant sensors... I really like the Tunze ATO, optical sensor, backed up by a mechanical sensor, and a timer in case they both fail.

My ATO reservoir is an EShopps 5g model. In a ~150g system, 5g isn't going to hurt anything. I drilled and mounted a mechanical float valve in it, RO/DI line to the float valve. I then put a solenoid valve on that line, run by my controller to only enable the water twice a week, for a couple of hours. That way, I'm not starting/stopping RO production every few minutes, but actually letting it run for a while when it does run. I _then_ added a mechanical float switch to the reservoir, so that if the float valve fails, there is a backup that will turn off the solenoid, stopping water flow. From the reservoir to the tank, standard Tunze osmolator.

Oh, and there's a cheap water alarm on the floor near the ATO system...

I feel pretty safe, and I _never_ have to carry buckets of water :)

[mcgyvr]

OK, this is good to know and makes a lot of sense. Do most folks that do it manually do it daily, or how often? How time consuming is the process and as a beginner how likely am I to screw it up?

Most have an ATO.. Its one of the best things to have as the manual process just gets annoying, you can forget, go on vacation,etc.....

But you really can't screw up manually and you can certainly do it that way but from the money I think you are dumping into this just go ATO..

I'm actually doing it manually right now on my brand new tank because I haven't gotten around to hooking up my ATO yet..
Once my tank is up and running I simply took a piece of tape at the water line in the return pump section of my sump.. That is my normal water level with perfect salinity.. Each day the water drops below that line and I simply add fresh RO/DI water till its back at the level of the line.. Plain and simple..

[Sk8r]

Hydor Smart Level is a good inexpensive one IF you have the means to prevent toddlers and yourself from jostling the magnet level-setter. Installation is not rocket science.

[ktownhero]

100% of the time. If there is salt content in the water, then an ATO benefits the tank...

[murphreef]

ATO - IMO is one of the more important items to include in any tank set up especially salt.

Get It :)

[jda]

It is beneficial if you limit the amount of water that it can add, make sure that it if fails then it fails "off" and you use a solid, reliable product. There are two kinds of ATO - those that have failed and those that will, so plan well so that you are safe when they do fail.

I have never used one. I have it set up so that I just turn a ball valve over my sump and RO goes in, but I don't mind carrying buckets if I had to. In twenty-plus years, I cannot tell too much that the inhabitants can tell a different in the slight salinity difference that is probably less than rainfall in the ocean or runoff in an atoll or near land.

[Andrew D]

I'm with JDA. I've had the Tunze Osmolator in the past which is reputed to be one of the best but I was always worried that something would fail so my freshwater reservoir was always quite small. The worry and the additional effort of maintaining a small reservoir offset any advantage in automating top-off so when I upgraded I decided to keep it simple and use a maxijet 1200 at regular intervals using a timer which keeps the salinity somewhat stable. I say somewhat because with 700G of water volume I don't really fret about slight changes. The additional advantage is that if your water volume changes for reasons other than evaporation (spill, skimmer overflow, siphoning water for QT system) you don't have to adjust your sensor so as to avoid backfilling with freshwater. Much simpler IMO.