- Joined
- Oct 12, 2016
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Of course, the story begins with me on vacation. Never had an issue in the 1.5 years this thing has been running.
Setup:
Reefer 525XL
Tunze ATO
20g RODI reservoir
Neptune DOS in the basement
2 x 50g water containers (RODI/SALT)
Pretty standard setup. I have the DOS to replace about 2g per day for roughly a 10% change weekly. Before going on vacation I made a fresh batch of salt water (a blend between Fritz blue and Red Sea Pro). The DOS pumps up 1 floor and has a run of about 30 feet horizontally. Like I mentioned this has worked flawlessly for well over a year. So while on vacation I like to monitor the wattage of all equipment plugged into the power bar. Nothing seemed out of wack until the wattage on the skimmer when from about 34 to 58. I don't think this was related to the AWC issue, but I did power it down and simply increased my AWC rate to compensate. Hey that's why we have this equipment, right?
Cut to the chase:
I get home and the reservoir is completely empty and the return chamber is just about to run dry. 20g of ATO in the summer should last me at least 1.5 weeks. I was away for 5 days. So I check the DOS pumps only to find the tabs and stabilizer posts broken on both the waste and fresh water. No problem I have replacements so I swap them out. Test again, still no water to the display. So I run a a quick test on the DOS by taking all of the plumbing out of the equation. Calibrate and things work perfectly, so its not the DOS. Reattach the plumbing from the salt container and I have problems. I take apart the plumbing only to find the lines to be completely blocked by a gray sediment. As I started replacing the lines the system worked as expected.
Conclusion:
The remove portion of the DOS pump worked as expected, but because of the blockage the refill side did not. As a result everytime I removed water with the AWC the water added was RODI from the topoff. This decreased my salinity to below 1.020. I've used Fritz salt before, and I've used the blend before. My only guess is that over time the blockage slowly increased causing the failure. Because of this I think I'm going to switch salt to straight up Red Sea Blue/Pro mix or go back to Tropic Marin. Those in my experience mix very clean, while the Fritz hasn't.
Interested if anyone else has had similar issues.
Setup:
Reefer 525XL
Tunze ATO
20g RODI reservoir
Neptune DOS in the basement
2 x 50g water containers (RODI/SALT)
Pretty standard setup. I have the DOS to replace about 2g per day for roughly a 10% change weekly. Before going on vacation I made a fresh batch of salt water (a blend between Fritz blue and Red Sea Pro). The DOS pumps up 1 floor and has a run of about 30 feet horizontally. Like I mentioned this has worked flawlessly for well over a year. So while on vacation I like to monitor the wattage of all equipment plugged into the power bar. Nothing seemed out of wack until the wattage on the skimmer when from about 34 to 58. I don't think this was related to the AWC issue, but I did power it down and simply increased my AWC rate to compensate. Hey that's why we have this equipment, right?
Cut to the chase:
I get home and the reservoir is completely empty and the return chamber is just about to run dry. 20g of ATO in the summer should last me at least 1.5 weeks. I was away for 5 days. So I check the DOS pumps only to find the tabs and stabilizer posts broken on both the waste and fresh water. No problem I have replacements so I swap them out. Test again, still no water to the display. So I run a a quick test on the DOS by taking all of the plumbing out of the equation. Calibrate and things work perfectly, so its not the DOS. Reattach the plumbing from the salt container and I have problems. I take apart the plumbing only to find the lines to be completely blocked by a gray sediment. As I started replacing the lines the system worked as expected.
Conclusion:
The remove portion of the DOS pump worked as expected, but because of the blockage the refill side did not. As a result everytime I removed water with the AWC the water added was RODI from the topoff. This decreased my salinity to below 1.020. I've used Fritz salt before, and I've used the blend before. My only guess is that over time the blockage slowly increased causing the failure. Because of this I think I'm going to switch salt to straight up Red Sea Blue/Pro mix or go back to Tropic Marin. Those in my experience mix very clean, while the Fritz hasn't.
Interested if anyone else has had similar issues.
Last edited: