ATO & Kalk reactor

[elaw62]

I'll be getting an aquamedic stirrer kalk reactor & would like to plumb my ato through this. I have a reefkeeper lite & was thinking I could plug ATO in a socket that relies on a ph reading I could set to kill the socket if ph gets too high which would or should prevent an overdose if tank is unattended for a few days. Is this possible?

 

[Hawkdl2]

Typically, you control the ATO according to water level, not pH. If you control it using pH you run the risk of not maintaining your water level.

There are several ways to accomplish what you want to do. I use two solenoids controlled by pH and a single pump controlled by water level and float switchs. At low pH, solenoid A opens and solenoid B closed and allows RO-DI to flow through my kalk reactor. At high pH, solenoid B opens and solenoid A closes and ATO water is directed to bypass the kalk reactor. It's all run by an Apex controller.

 

[Perched Urchin]

Depending on the size of your system and what you want to accomplish, there are lots of ways to dose kalk.
In my system, my ATO is a separate function from my kalk reactor (although they feed from the same RO/DI storage vessel). I use my RKE to control the stir pump (4 times a day, 1 minute each time) on my GEO reactor, and it also controls a BRS 50 ml/min peristaltic pump that doses about 1 cup of kalkwasser 8 times per day. My ATO is a gravity fed system that has solenoids controlled by a dual float switch. It basically fills in what ever isn't covered by the kalkwasser, usually about a gallon per day.
The total of 8 cups of kalkwasser was a volume I had to tune to figure out exactly over a period of time and will change as I add water volume or additional corals to the system. I also have an "alarm" function set that will prevent the reactor from feeding the system at all if the pH gets too high.

Some folks simply run all kalkwasser for ATO. I just choose to use a controlled volume separate from ATO so I can make adjustments without potentially messing with my overall water level.