ATO with a Apex and DOS

[ochriso]

just purchased an apex and a DOS that I plan on setting up for auto water changes but I am curious about pro's and con's of using a dosing pump to do auto top off?

my thought is to measure evaporation and then set up pump to add appropriate amount of fresh water back. obviously there is the concern of no limit switch but if you have the apex limit the time the outlet has power wouldn't that be fairly safe and reliable?

also as the temperature inside the house changes the evaporation rate would change. I have never payed attention to the difference from winter to summer but seems like winter would evaporation would be less than summer

 

[Ann_A]

If you are going to use a dosing pump for top off I would recommend investing in a couple float switches to hook up to an apex breakout box. Evaporation would change based on several factors including temperature, relative humidity, and air flow. I don't think you would get a perfect top off system simply by dosing a fixed amount using a dosing pump. Even if you could measure it and dose a very close amount I don't think it would be as stable as if you used float switches to control it. Just my thoughts...

 

[slief]

Personally, I'd never use anything but a dosing/peristaltic pump for ATO's. My thinking is that should anything ever go wrong, the results will be slow enough to catch since a peristaltic pump transfers water very slowly. With a power head or other higher flow pump, you could desalinate or flood your tank in a matter of minutes.

I use my Apex for my ATO and currently use a Stenner industrial peristaltic pump for my ATO. I've used AquaMedic dosing pumps as well as Litermeter slave pumps with AC Adapter power for ATO duty as well. The DOS would work great too. I use a pair of redundant float switches connected to my break out box to turn the ATO pump on and off. I use separate high level and low level float switches for fail safes. I also salinity monitoring as part of my fail safes as well. I also use a solenoid inline on my ATO line as an additional fail safe.

AS mentioned above, house temp and humidity will impact evaporation rates. In my case, I evaporate more in the summer than in the winter. In fact, for me it's almost twice as much per day. If you run a furnace or heater in the home during the winter or even AC in the summer, both will accelerate evaporation rates.

 

[ochriso]

OK thanks for the input. Seems like I should check into a few more failsafes

 

[slief]

Fail safes are just one of the many advantages that the Apex brings to the table and I make use of lots of them for my tank. They make for peace of mind and I have never had issues with my ATO, having the ability to monitor sump levels, water on the floor, salinity, pH, ORP etc can prevent disasters. Best of all, they are simple to implement and build in to your programming.

 

[jduck]

I had an extra dos so I used it for qt ato. 150g rubbermaid with a float switch. Every 6 hours if the switch was closed would dose 1000ml.

 

[Breadman03]

@slief, years ago, you had recommended a float switch with a headphone jack. Mine just failed after many years of service and I'm having trouble locating them again as my old computer crashed and I lost the bookmark. Do you recall their proper name or the vendor you got them from? Thank you for any help.

ETA: I found the post where you listed Premium Aquatics. Reef Fanatic makes them, but they're on backorder. I'll probably just swap to a sealed switch without the jack. Thanks again!

 

[blaxsun]

The Neptune ATK kit has been working flawlessly for me.

 

[scott11106]

i have been using an apex DOS for water changes and top off for 4 years and it works flawlessly and it is a fail safe in design. The only problem that can/will occur is the DOS pump head wears out over time (years) and needs to be replaced.