Basement ATO

[dugthefish]

Anyone run their ATO directly from their water station to tank? Any issues or concerns I should have? Getting tired of filling the reservoir....

 

[Larry L]

I do, it works fine. Just need to make sure the pump you use has enough head height. Also probably do *not* want to do this if you water station is being constantly topped off from your RO unit, for the same reason you probably would not want to run straight from your RO unit to the sump - if you ever get a leak, or if the ATO ever gets stuck "on", you could end up with a flood.

 

[Sleepydoc]

This will work fine until it doesn't. One thing to ask is 'what happens if the ATO gets stuck on?' my ATO has a 10gallon reservoir. I have to fill it about once a week. If something happens and the entire 10 gallons goes into my tank I won't have a flood and my salinity won't drop dangerously low. Now, if the entire 32 gallons from my DI reservoir were to dump into my tank I'd have a lot more issues...

 

[mfinn]

Anyone run their ATO directly from their water station to tank? Any issues or concerns I should have? Getting tired of filling the reservoir....

You mean directly from the rodi?

 

[dugthefish]

You mean directly from the rodi?

From the barrel my RODI fills

 

[Sleepydoc]

Running directly from your RODI has the same risks I outlined above with the addition of a near infinite supply of water and the problem of burning through your DI resin because the RO filter needs time to warm up to peak efficiency each time you start it up.

 

[Tastee]

I refill my stock RSR 250 gravity fed ATO from my RODI station once daily using a Neptune ATK. The RODI station itself is currently manually run once every 3 weeks or so to keep the 100L reservoir full. This setup gives me lots of redundancy and failsafes. Running the ATK once a day I hope will extend the life of the PMUP. The ATK has 3 levels of failsafe to avoid over-filling. The ATO will keep the tank topped up for 3 days if the ATK did fail.

 

[mfinn]

From the barrel my RODI fills

I have my rodi setup to fill a 30 gallon brute container. I run my JBJ ATO off that brute container.
I use the JBJ ATO because it does have a time limit it can run before needing to be reset manually.
It also has a audible alarm.
But lets say everything failed and the ato gets stuck on the fill mode the 30 gallons of freshwater would certainly really mess up the salinity in my display tank ( 240 plus 86 gallon sump) it wouldn't be fatal for everything.

 

[Crazyju]

I have mine running 50ft from my RO containter. The ATO only gets power 3 times a day for 3 minutes each time. If it gets stuck on It can only run for 30 seconds or so before the timer turns it back off. Not fool proof, but safer than always on.

 

[Phildago]

I ran mine for about a year rodi directly to my sump. Worked perfectly.

I got nervous about possible failure so I added some redundancy with an water level sensor and solenoid valve. Now if my float valve ever broke I'd still be safe. Zero maintenance until that day... If it ever comes since float valves are generally pretty reliable.

https://www.marinedepot.com/xp-aqua...uto-shut-off-valve-kit-aka-the-marriage-saver

 

[ryeguyy84]

I use my apex to turn the RODI on for I think an hour and a half on Wednesday to fill the top off container in the basement, I use a litermeter to bring water to the tank for top off from there. The container also has a float valve to stop the flow when it's full. Then on Friday it turns on for 6 hours to fill my RODI bin (separate solenoid) and top off again.

 

[Malevolent]

So currently I have an ATO issue. I have the Tunze 5017 and the pump is in a dedicated container with rodi/kalk mix located in the basement (about 18 feet away from the display/sump). The Tunze will do the job but I am constantly having to prime it because of back pressure which defeats the purpose of an ATO. I would think the simple solution would be to get an aftermarket pump with more head pressure and get the gaudy adapter from Tunze to make it work.
I have two issues that I would also like to fix, one is that the pump has to be kalk friendly and two, be apex compatible. I could just get the Apex ATK to solve head pressure and apex controller compatibility, but that doesn’t solve the kalk issue with the wear tear on these pumps. I was thinking of peristaltic pump but I don’t know of any that are controllable with the Neptune Apex. Anybody have any ideas of combating this problem or am I overthinking this?

 

[Albertan22]

So currently I have an ATO issue. I have the Tunze 5017 and the pump is in a dedicated container with rodi/kalk mix located in the basement (about 18 feet away from the display/sump). The Tunze will do the job but I am constantly having to prime it because of back pressure which defeats the purpose of an ATO. I would think the simple solution would be to get an aftermarket pump with more head pressure and get the gaudy adapter from Tunze to make it work.
I have two issues that I would also like to fix, one is that the pump has to be kalk friendly and two, be apex compatible. I could just get the Apex ATK to solve head pressure and apex controller compatibility, but that doesn’t solve the kalk issue with the wear tear on these pumps. I was thinking of peristaltic pump but I don’t know of any that are controllable with the Neptune Apex. Anybody have any ideas of combating this problem or am I overthinking this?

For the price of the pmup v2 just replace the thing when (if) the kalk wrecks it. I have run a maxi jet 800 as my ato pump for over a decade without replacement, about half that time there was kalk in the ato water. The kalk hasn’t wrecked my pump yet.

 

[Malevolent]

I have to agree. In my opinion and budget, the pump is super cheap. I was just wondering if there is a better/different way to accomplish my goal. I could go with the avast ATO system but it’s double the price and still not sure if it’s worth it.

 

[Albertan22]

I’d certainly be looking at solving your head pressure issue. Priming that pump all the time would drive me nuts! Whether you go with a peristaltic pump or an ATK I think is probably a personal choice and dependent on budget. ATK’s haven’t had the best reviews in the past, but I don’t know if that has been fixed in their version 2 of the system. A DOS will certainly pump the distances you are talking about. I’m looking at maybe getting one to set up an automatic water change system eventually but that’s a year or more down the road for me. If you went with something like a DOS you’d basically have to use parts from an ATK and come up with programming to control it, or Macgyver something with a breakout box to control it anyway.

 

[Malevolent]

I’d certainly be looking at solving your head pressure issue. Priming that pump all the time would drive me nuts! Whether you go with a peristaltic pump or an ATK I think is probably a personal choice and dependent on budget. ATK’s haven’t had the best reviews in the past, but I don’t know if that has been fixed in their version 2 of the system. A DOS will certainly pump the distances you are talking about. I’m looking at maybe getting one to set up an automatic water change system eventually but that’s a year or more down the road for me. If you went with something like a DOS you’d basically have to use parts from an ATK and come up with programming to control it, or Macgyver something with a breakout box to control it anyway.

I haven’t seen any good reviews on the Neptune ATK either which is why I went with the Tunze. I have the DOS from Neptune for AWC which has no issues with head pressure. This is how I got the idea of using a DOS pump “peristaltic pump”. Neptune doesn’t have a stand alone DOS pump for ATO, so I looked into the company Avast which uses this option and can be controlled with a breakout box for the apex. The issue here is that I see good reviews on there site but nothing on R2R. For something that costs twice as much as the Neptune ATK, I am a bit hesitant without user experience from here.