Red Sea Reefato+ Problem!

[MadCaddy]

I just hooked up my new reef Ato+ and am already running into problems. I had it all setup and left for a few hours. At that time I got a notification that the pump had timed out and so was shut off. I went to check on the tank and the system had pumped RODI water to the point of being well above the sensor and then shutdown because the pump ran for too long. Any ideas on why this would be? My understanding is that it should start/shut down as the water level fluctuates between the two bottom sensors 1/8” apart? This definitely did not happen.

 

[etcee]

Yikes. I am no help but I want to follow this thread as this unit kind of looked nice and had high hopes for it.

 

[sublime275]

Try resetting the pump monitors in the app.

 

[MadCaddy]

Try resetting the pump monitors in the app.

I tried resetting in the app and also did a hard reset and neither worked

 

[BetterJake]

Is the water level in the ATO resovoir above the water level in the sump? If so, maybe a siphon event from the ATO to the sump occurred, if the siphon break was also not installed

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

Also check the set up. It is important that you put in the parameters of how far your reservoir is from the sump. The ATO+ takes that in consideration when pump goes on. It may pump much more if it thinks your Sump is 10 ft away.

 

[ErikVR]

Are you sure they pump is the culprit?

I had the same thing when I first installed it. Same message in the app as well.
But it turned out to be my installation that created a siphon that lead to it sucking all the water into the return chamber.

Is it hooked up exactly the way it is in the drawings in the manual? Is the return stop pointing in the right direction and is it placed vertically in the reservoir (and not outside on the way down)?

 

[Daniel]

Running into a similar issue. “Pump ran for too long and has been shut down.” The water level is way above the sensors. Been troubleshooting past 12 hours only to have the thing dump 3G of top off water into my sump. Nearly emptying the top off reservoir.

Confused and frustrated right now with this piece of equipment.

Hard resets didn’t work. Cleaning / inspecting pump and sensors with nothing out of ordinary. App reset also didn’t do anything… quite frustrating for something that should be much easier to manage.

Anyone have any ideas? Did OP fix the problem?

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

Running into a similar issue. “Pump ran for too long and has been shut down.” The water level is way above the sensors. Been troubleshooting past 12 hours only to have the thing dump 3G of top off water into my sump. Nearly emptying the top off reservoir.

Confused and frustrated right now with this piece of equipment.

Hard resets didn’t work. Cleaning / inspecting pump and sensors with nothing out of ordinary. App reset also didn’t do anything… quite frustrating for something that should be much easier to manage.

Anyone have any ideas? Did OP fix the problem?

There are some updates, so make sure that those are up to date.
How long has this been in operation? Is this something new that just happened or is it right out of the box?

 

[Daniel]

Happened this past week for me, been in use about 4 weeks. Will check on the updates.

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

Happened this past week for me, been in use about 4 weeks. Will check on the updates.

I know you said you cleaned the electrodes. A little soak in citric acid and a soft toothbrush may help an unseen coating. Is the sensor near your dosing tubes? I am just trying to think of causes that could affect the sensor. It worked for a month, then it didn’t. somewhere along the line there is a loss of communication to the water height. Just have to figure out where and why.

 

[Daniel]

I know you said you cleaned the electrodes. A little soak in citric acid and a soft toothbrush may help an unseen coating. Is the sensor near your dosing tubes? I am just trying to think of causes that could affect the sensor. It worked for a month, then it didn’t. somewhere along the line there is a loss of communication to the water height. Just have to figure out where and why.

Appreciate the tip on citric acid. Went ahead and re-inspected electrodes (nothing visually out of place). Made a citric acid bath, left the sensor with electrodes submerged for about 5 min. Took a clean toothbrush and gave it a good scrubbing, resubmerged for 5 mins again in citric acid bath. After a quick DI rinse, it seems like the sensor is functioning again.

Not sure what it was since I couldn’t see anything but the citric acid bath did indeed do the trick. Seems I’ll have to build this maintenance step in my cleaning routine as a preventative measure.

Now, I’m monitoring to make sure the sensors continue to operate without any issues. So far so good. Thank you!

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

Appreciate the tip on citric acid. Went ahead and re-inspected electrodes (nothing visually out of place). Made a citric acid bath, left the sensor with electrodes submerged for about 5 min. Took a clean toothbrush and gave it a good scrubbing, resubmerged for 5 mins again in citric acid bath. After a quick DI rinse, it seems like the sensor is functioning again.

Not sure what it was since I couldn’t see anything but the citric acid bath did indeed do the trick. Seems I’ll have to build this maintenance step in my cleaning routine as a preventative measure.

Now, I’m monitoring to make sure the sensors continue to operate without any issues. So far so good. Thank you!

Your welcome!
I am glad it worked for you, I hope it continues to do so. It's one thing for something to be defective out of the box, but after you have been using it for a bit... The build quality seemed much better than that.

 

[GBoos]

I have the same problem here. Stop working after 6 months.
So I took a bath with just vinegar and it still gives me an unknown error message. I live in Brazil, and I even have the warranty already recognized by Redsea, but I have no way to send and request the warranty.

Appreciate the tip on citric acid. Went ahead and re-inspected electrodes (nothing visually out of place). Made a citric acid bath, left the sensor with electrodes submerged for about 5 min. Took a clean toothbrush and gave it a good scrubbing, resubmerged for 5 mins again in citric acid bath. After a quick DI rinse, it seems like the sensor is functioning again.

Not sure what it was since I couldn’t see anything but the citric acid bath did indeed do the trick. Seems I’ll have to build this maintenance step in my cleaning routine as a preventative measure.

Now, I’m monitoring to make sure the sensors continue to operate without any issues. So far so good. Thank you!

 

[ErikVR]

I honestly think these things have serious issues. I've had replacements that only last about 4-5 months.
Then they stop detecting water, making the pump want to dump all the water into the tank. They trigger an emergency shut down when the pump runs too long. As soon as you clear the warning in the app, they start dumping water again even though the return chamber is flooded.

Cleaning with citric acid never makes a difference on mine.
(I clean all my equipment with citric acid every 3 months)

 

[SheldonC]

I've had the ATO+ for about four months now (came with the 300 G2 MAX I purchased brand new) and I've had nothing but problems. For the longest time the sensor wouldn't actually read the level so it would just dump a ton of water (even with the siphon break) - at least once a day it would add .5-.6 gallons of water in a single instance and then it would be too high in the tank. Red Sea even sent me a new sensor and it was still a problem after deleting the app, deleting the ATO from the app, resetting, etc.

My most recent problem with the ATO is I came down one morning to the pump running dry. It had drained my entire RO reservoir (luckily it wasn't very full) but didn't shut off when it ran dry or ran for too long. No app notification. Nothing. Needless to say I'm not happy with the Red Sea gear. I'm going to be removing everything aside from the RollerMat and ReefLEDs and replacing it with Apex-supported gear.

 

[merkmerk73]

My ATO sensor just failed after about 8 months of usage

Red Sea is replacing it.

My failure pattern went like this:

-1 day I get a warning that the water level sensor doesn’t work
- I clean with citric acid and it’s pristine
- temp sensor stops working and goes wildly out of control with crazy ranges
- I contact support because I know the water level sensor is going to fail next
- support insists I reset
- after reset it works for a few hours then both sensors fail
- the pump does not continuously run so it doesn’t trigger that failsafe, but rather tries to flood my sump in 15 second spurts

I was home fortunately so I caught it and turned auto top off off.

It seems Red Sea has major quality issues across the board with anything that isn’t a white label.

I hope that they’re able to identify the problem with the sensor to figure out how to fix it because this product is fantastic when it works

Attachments : temp log, water level reading “below” when clearly well above

 

[merkmerk73]

Btw for whatever it’s worth I don’t think it’s the titanium sensor itself failing

That thing looks extremely clean

I think there’s bad electronic components inside that are just wearing out and unreliable

 

[slingfox]

Wry disturbing anecdotes here. I have a RedSea ATO. It has been working great for seven months. I hope its reliability holds up!

 

[merkmerk73]

What concerned me is that mine was pulsing water in, instead of doing a continuous drain (and then shutting off and alerting me)

So I am going to try to put the leak sensor at the top of the sump and just use it as a second flood prevention - rather than have it down at the bottom where I have to be flooded already.