My tank overflowed

[jeddy576]

I woke up this morning to my tank overflowing. I have a jbj ato with the sensor in my tank because i dont have a sump. A snail was on the float switch and made the ato run for who knows how long. Any ideas on how I can keep the snails from tripping it again?

 

[sirreal63]

Remove the ATO which in many cased actually means Auto Disaster.

I know a lot of people swear by them and you probably would have right before the automatic disaster it caused. There are safer ways of automation but IMO it never involves a float switch. Many people will say have a second one for the upper range but what ends up happening there is salt creep prevents the failsafe from shutting down the pump because the float never moves unless it has water on it so the salt creep clogs it up. Snail guards help but eventually that float switch will fail.

Using a peristaltic pump set to add only what gets evaporated in a day is still the best way IMO or only having a small reservoir of fresh water so the amount that can be dumped is limited. By far the safest way is to add top off daily.

I am terribly sorry this happened and hopefully it didn't kill everything.

 

[tbittner]

I built my own controller (and it was expensive) and I use three salinity probes to monitor the salinity. I control my top off pumps with the results of the probe readings.

I use three so if one is out of range of the other two, my program alarms that one and runs with just the two other probes until I can resolve the issue with the one bad one.

Anyway, to protect the float switch, build a small container out of PVC for the float switch to sit in. Drill holes in the PVC to allow the switch to still float up and down with the water level. This will also solve sloshing issues.

 

[vanmo92]

You could put in a second float switch just higher than the one you have now, and reverse it so it automatically shuts off when the water level gets to high. Or you could build an eggcrate box to put around the float switch so that snails and other animals can not get near it.

 

[Gtstricky]

Check out the snail guard here: http://www.aquahub.com/store/autotopoffcomp.html

 

[MyMonkey]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12448656#post12448656 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sirreal63
Remove the ATO which in many cased actually means Auto Disaster.

I know a lot of people swear by them and you probably would have right before the automatic disaster it caused. There are safer ways of automation but IMO it never involves a float switch. Many people will say have a second one for the upper range but what ends up happening there is salt creep prevents the failsafe from shutting down the pump because the float never moves unless it has water on it so the salt creep clogs it up. Snail guards help but eventually that float switch will fail.

Using a peristaltic pump set to add only what gets evaporated in a day is still the best way IMO or only having a small reservoir of fresh water so the amount that can be dumped is limited. By far the safest way is to add top off daily.

I am terribly sorry this happened and hopefully it didn't kill everything.

I want this pump. Where can I find one?

 

[sirreal63]

E-bay is a good place to start.