Auto Filling Your ATO Water Top Off Fresh Water Containers

[n2585722]

Is your 20gal brute act as your ato container or do you fill a espérate container in your cabinet?

Yes, my ATO pulls directly from the 20 gallon brute. I have three of the brute cans. One is for DI, one for fresh saltwater and one is a mixing tank. I also do AWC and pull from the fresh saltwater tank. I have my ATO, AWC and dosing pumps in the garage. The tank is 35ft away from the garage.

 

[SirRoadwolf]

I designed my own system using float switches, relays and timer relays.

Step one: Filtration

There are 3 electronic valves here. One is the main flow valve which introduces water pressure into the RO/DI. The other two operate opposite eachother. One is a purge valve, the other is the valve that sends the water to the 55 gallon Fresh Water storage drum. There is a timer relay that will select the purge valve for 3 minutes, before then selecting the valve that flows water to the holding tank.

When the storage drum gets low, it detects that with a float switch which operates a relay in my main control box. That relay then sends 12VDC over 2 wires to the RO/DI system, which opens the main valve to let water flow into the RO/DI, and also activates the timer relay. When the water is topped off, it shuts off this 12 VDC signal and the whole RO/DI circuit goes dead and closes again.

Step 2: Auto Top Off

There are 3 level switches in my main aquarium system. 2 in the pump area of my sump. One is a ATO sense switch which will activate a relay which will pass 120 VAC thru to a plug which a pump in my Fresh Water holding tank, which will them add fresh water to the sump until that switch satisfies itself.

The other switch in there is an overflow or high level switch. If this switch activates, it will shut off any power to the Fresh Water ATO pump.

The switch up in the display tank will detect if the level is too high there, and thus will shut off the main pump if it is high, so as to not cause an overflow.

I rarely have to mess with the aquarium at all.

 

[Reefglide]

Using the 40 gallon creep killer from the aqua Fx guys. High low float switches with Solenoid. Float valve back up. It’s supplied from RO/DI via 80 psi pump.
40 gallon container gravity feeds sump via in sump float valve.
sump room with ATO and RO/DI all located in the attached garage. No chance of flooding the house. 180 SPS. Radion G 5 Blue x 3. 40 gallon chaeto Refugium.
no water changes.

 

[Alaeriel]

Does having my husband do it count as automated for me?

 

[Sleepydoc]

I don't and I won't.

My ATO reservoir is 10 gallons, my RODI reservoir is 32. One of the ATO failsafes is the fact that it's limited to 10 gallons. That's not enough to cause a flood or catastrophic salinity shifts if the entire 10 gallons gets dumped into the sump.

If there were a direct connection to my RODI reservoir, or worse, to my RODI filter, I could put 42 gallons or potentially hundreds of gallons into the system. No Thanks. My RODI reservoir lasts a week and I fill it up when I do my water changes. The most work is if I have to carry two 5 gallon buckets, but most of the time I run a hose from my mixing station to the tank and run the pump for 5 minutes.

 

[Sleepydoc]

Does having my husband do it count as automated for me?

It depends on the husband and how much you have to nag him!

 

[Sawyer Breslow]

Yes, my ATO pulls directly from the 20 gallon brute. I have three of the brute cans. One is for DI, one for fresh saltwater and one is a mixing tank. I also do AWC and pull from the fresh saltwater tank. I have my ATO, AWC and dosing pumps in the garage. The tank is 35ft away from the garage.

What pump are you using? Does the hydros ato kit pump that far?

 

[MarineREEFpassion]

I don't have an ATO but if I did I would fill it manually, it will be less work than the manual top off I am having to do 2-3 times a day. Getting an ATO looks better every day but I can't do it yet, that money needs to go toward a chiller since my tanks are in the garage and I'm in Mississippi, they hit 87° the other day.

Just get a portable a/c unit rather than the money they want for the chillers that aren’t very dependable and way over priced, in my opinion. I did this and my tanks never get above 79 even when we hit 115 this summer.

 

[n2585722]

What pump are you using? Does the hydros ato kit pump that far?

I use dosing pumps since I had to run the tubing up through the attic to get to the tank. I use Intllab dosing pumps. I made my own cables to hook them to a drive port. The pumps are 12v pumps. Three of these 4 pumps are in use. The forth one is a spare. The one with the green pump heads is the AWC pump. The one to the right of it is the ATO pump. The on directly above the ATO doses All For Reef. The ATO and All For Reef pump use the same tubing to the tank. The pumps have a pot to adjust the flow rate. Other than that there s no control circuits in the pump itself. The AWC pump has been modified with a new motor to allow use of two pump heads. The only difference in the motor I could see was a longer shaft. Otherwise the motors were identical.

 

[tc760]

I have a float switch on my 10gal ATO reservoir. It's hooked up to my Apex. When it triggers low my Apex opened a solenoid for a set amount of time that allows about 7 gal of water to be filled. The water comes straight from my RODI. I have a float valve in my reservoir as well as a back up. I've ran this for a few years no issues. I have 3 gal of space just in case the solenoid fails open and the float valve leaks. My tank uses a gallon+ a day so I'm not worried about flooding much.

 

[Laith]

Here's how I autofill both my ATO container as well as my fresh saltwater reservoir for AWC. I still haven't gotten around to getting the email notifications to work. So for the Fresh Saltwater Tank I add the total amount of salt when it is filling and when SW1 is activated the Litermeter automatically starts up again. That tank (about 260l) takes about 12-14 hours to fill so the water is thoroughly mixed by the time SW2 is triggered.

 

[Squidward]

I do it manually. Sadly I've overflowed it a few times. Thankfully I don't have wood floors or else ...;Dead

 

[puffdragon]

I have worked in water treatment for 30 years, performed many Failure Modes and Effects Analysis on those systems and seen many automated systems fail. Plus I understand Murphy's Law. If it can fail it will. Just my $0.02. This is a great discussion and there are many ways to put off that failure. Keep on reefin'.

 

[homer1475]

An ATO for your ATO.....That takes LARS to a new level of lazy.

I could see automating your RO/DI to fill an ATO container, but automating filling a container container from another container is just lazy. IMO

If your not willing to put in a little effort, why have a reef tank? But I guess that could be said for anything we automate in this hobby.

 

[Tony the Fish]

Have a tall dog food container that's about 15 gallons under tank. A long hose to ro and fill it once a week

 

[Greybeard]

Hm. Some interesting methods here.

Mine is pretty simple really, but somewhat hard to describe...

Water from RO/DI filter enters closet, runs through an electric ball valve. Valve is normally open. Auto closes on power failure, or when any of the 3 high level sensors are tripped. Water then runs to a manual manifold setup, water running to sump, kalk reservoir, and mixing station barrel. Each with it's own manual shut off valve.

At the sump, water flows in through a mechanical float valve. There is a high level sensor an inch above the float valve. Water tripping that high level sensor alarms, and shuts off incoming water via electric ball valve. No, there's no reservoir. I use the same RO system for drinking water, both fridges, icemakers, etc. It's used a lot. Never had any issue with tds creep.

At the kalkwasser reservoir, same same. Mechanical float valve, high level sensor, just like the sump has. Reservoir is small, 1 gallon. Simple BRS dosing pump pushing 1000ml per day through my Avast kalk stirrer.

At the mixing station... I only open the manifold valve leading to the mixing barrel when I want to refill it, every 3 weeks or so. Barrel holds 3 weekly water changes worth of mix. Same again, mechanical float valve, high level sensor. When I want to refill, open the valve, shut it off the next day and add salt.

So, each water use point has a mechanical float valve, backed up by an electric float switch, that is normally high and dry. Any failure of a float valve, which does happen, causes a small level increase in the failed container, followed by an alarm, both audible and via email. Failures are rare, and I know about any failure immediately. Keep a box of float valves on the shelf. No big deal.

Add in the battery operated water alarm in the sump floor to alert me to any leaks, and I feel I've got a pretty safe system.

 

[bfreeskier]

I use my Apex…I have a float switch at the bottom and top of my 5gal ATO bucket. When it gets low, a PMup fills the bucket using a timer around 20mins. The high level float cuts the flow if needed as a safety, as well as a float valve for backup safety.

I usually have around 100gals of RODI on hand so my supply comes from those barrels and not straight from the RODI system.

That’s exactly what I do, I have a PMUP in my fresh water storage barrel a FMK at the water making station and then A solenoid and a float value on my ATO next to my tank. The PMUP pumps water 120ft through the attic to my tank. It’s awesome.

 

[Vyper]

I keep 150 gallon tank filled by float valve to always have rodi water ready to go. Also have apex solenoid and float switch attached to ato to automatically kick on and off when need straight from rodi

 

[RobB'z Reef]

I have my rodi plumbed to my ato, works good

 

[njoyreef]

This is not a discussion on an ATO. This is a discussion about automatically refilling your ATO fresh water containers.

I saw a thread on automatically keeping your auto top off fresh water container filled and I thought it would make a good discussion. Normally people use a 5 gallon bucket or some other container to hold the extra fresh water but they can run out pretty quickly or you can forget to refill them. Also if you take a long trip you will either need to get a bigger container, have someone else manually top it off, or have a way to auto top off your container! Let's discuss it!

1. Do you have an automated way that you replace the water from your freshwater ATO containers? (NOT to your aquarium)

2. What have you found to work the best for keeping your ATO fresh water containers filled?


Tunze RO Water Controller

I have my 200 gallon RODI reservoir connected to my ATO float valve in sump.
Couple of measures though, I plan to put a solenoid which is controlled by high level switch. I will put 2 solenoids in series for redundancy. These solenoids should be changed every year.. I might put a leak sensor as well, not sure though...

My 200 gallon RODI reservoir is in my side yard which is continously topped off with RODI system. If it overflows then it's in sideyard and the flow of RODI is not that much on continuous basis. I connected the reservoir to my sump ( that is 50 ft away) and run the line through the crawlspace..

In fact today morning I laid that line, crawled quite a bit