Hi everyone, I just wanted to share my experience with this ATO
I bought this unit at least a couple of months for a 10g QT tank that I was setting up for a mandarin. I ended up picking up some live rock with good sized colonies of acropora from a local so I decided to try dosing kalkwasser through the ATO.
The first couple of weeks were normal other than the odd time when it would slightly overfill, usually because of the microbubbles that were stuck to the sensor.
A little over a month ago, I came down one morning to find the water level above the entire sensor. No bubbles on the sensor so I just chalked it up to being a one time thing but I did reach out to the company to let them know. The rep told me to move the sensor away from the HOB so the water level is not so turbulent, along with checking a few other things. After making the changes, the same thing happened again a week later. This time, the rep mentioned that this ATO may overfill smaller tanks and suggested that I buy their media reactor to fix this problem. $75 for a little plastic box and small pump to fix a possible incompatibility that I couldn’t have known about until I read the owners manual? Ouch…
Ultimately I decided not to buy the thing and to keep running it the way it was. The overfilling happened again and finally the acros died, probably due to the many fluctuations with the kalkwasser. I wasn’t too torn up as the corals were free but still, this stinks.
The rep mentioned a few times that if the sensor were faulty that it would fail every time, not once a week. And that the ATO can overfill smaller aquariums. I just don’t understand this. I’ve seen the pump run and it’s more than capable of pumping for a couple of seconds only, not nearly long enough to overfill. Not to mention, it can operate at the proper level for a week and then one day poop the bed. I mentioned this a couple of times in our correspondence but he never directly addressed this question at which led me to believe he didn’t want to give a straight answer.
I am writing all of this not to say buy or not buy this unit but to share my experience for anyone researching ATOs.
I bought this unit at least a couple of months for a 10g QT tank that I was setting up for a mandarin. I ended up picking up some live rock with good sized colonies of acropora from a local so I decided to try dosing kalkwasser through the ATO.
The first couple of weeks were normal other than the odd time when it would slightly overfill, usually because of the microbubbles that were stuck to the sensor.
A little over a month ago, I came down one morning to find the water level above the entire sensor. No bubbles on the sensor so I just chalked it up to being a one time thing but I did reach out to the company to let them know. The rep told me to move the sensor away from the HOB so the water level is not so turbulent, along with checking a few other things. After making the changes, the same thing happened again a week later. This time, the rep mentioned that this ATO may overfill smaller tanks and suggested that I buy their media reactor to fix this problem. $75 for a little plastic box and small pump to fix a possible incompatibility that I couldn’t have known about until I read the owners manual? Ouch…
Ultimately I decided not to buy the thing and to keep running it the way it was. The overfilling happened again and finally the acros died, probably due to the many fluctuations with the kalkwasser. I wasn’t too torn up as the corals were free but still, this stinks.
The rep mentioned a few times that if the sensor were faulty that it would fail every time, not once a week. And that the ATO can overfill smaller aquariums. I just don’t understand this. I’ve seen the pump run and it’s more than capable of pumping for a couple of seconds only, not nearly long enough to overfill. Not to mention, it can operate at the proper level for a week and then one day poop the bed. I mentioned this a couple of times in our correspondence but he never directly addressed this question at which led me to believe he didn’t want to give a straight answer.
I am writing all of this not to say buy or not buy this unit but to share my experience for anyone researching ATOs.