ATO Malfunction

[Hiimscott]

Hey guys, I've just woken up to find my ATO has pumped all the water from its reservoir into my main tank and killed everything inside.

The brand I was using is AUTOAQUA Smart ATO DUO

Has anyone experienced this? What can I do?

 

[EgotisticObeseChihuahua]

I'm sorry for your loss. Maybe you could try to contact customer support about this unfortunate situation.

 

[907_Reefer]

How many gal system and how big is the ATO reservoir? Current SG? Pic?

I've had a 5g ATO reservoir dump into a 55g when the skimmer pumped the same in SW out, lowered SG from 1.025 to ~1.021..

 

[TX_REEF]

Sorry that happened to you - what do you mean by "what can I do"? You can certainly contact the seller for a refund on the product, but beyond that it sounds like you'll need to do a massive water change and replace with higher salinity water to get your water chemistry back where it needs to be so you can re-start. I'n the future, you'll want to either purchase a higher quality ATO system, add an additional float shutoff switch as an additional security measure, or use a RODI reservoir that is small enough to not crash your tank if it gets dumped into your system.

 

[907_Reefer]

I will second having a moderately sized ATO reservoir as a fail safe. For me I use 5g for a 55g tank (~40g filled).

In my case, the ATO worked perfectly but the skimmer freaked and pulled ~6g SW out in no time.

 

[Hiimscott]

Hey thanks for the replies - my tank is a 20g Water box I don't run a skimmer the tank is only about 8 months old.

I thought spending $250AUD was a decent priced ato.

My ATO reservoir is a 4g bucket.

I'll contact the seller of the ATO. Thanks

 

[TX_REEF]

Hey thanks for the replies - my tank is a 20g Water box I don't run a skimmer the tank is only about 8 months old.

I thought spending $250AUD was a decent priced ato.

My ATO reservoir is a 4g bucket.

I'll contact the seller of the ATO. Thanks

I didn't look up the ATO and just assumed it was a cheap ~$20 amazon job, sorry about that! At that price point, malfunction is absolutely ridiculous. I'd even try pushing them to offer compensation for livestock.

 

[Aquaddictorbj4]

Have you installed the siphon break to break the siphon??

 

[Aquavaj]

Looks like this uses an optical sensor for the failsafe and a siphon break in the line. For me I have a hard time trusting these ATOs that uses an optical sensor for the failsafe. Too often do I see my Tunze that uses optical for water level detection fail to detect a low water level. A good cleaning usually resolves the problem so you really have to keep up with regular cleaning for these optical sensors. Float sensors can fail too but in my experience they take much more crud to cause them to fail.

 

[jda]

I know that this does not help now, but do not use an ATO that does not have a timer that is somewhat adjustable as a third failsafe. If both sensors/floats stick on, you want it to time out after a minute or whatever works for your size tank.