Neptune ATK First Impressions

[ca1ore]

Excellent, thanks.

 

[cincyjim]

Let me know if this will work please or if you have other ideas. I bought two Apex magnet mount optical water level sensors, one will be high and one will be low. I also got the PMUP to place in my RODI container and two Apex solenoid valves (always closed). My thinking is, when the low water sensor is active, my Apex will activate my PMUP and solenoid valve EB8 outlets until the low water sensor is deactivated at which time the Apex will turn off the EB8 outlets for the PMUP and solenoids. I also will use a float valve on the fill line as a third safety to shut the water off in case both solenoids fail. This will be used to fill/top off my ATO container not my sump. My Tunze will perform the ATO to sump duties. Let me know what you. Thanks!

 

[gcarroll]

Great to see Neptune making their products work as stand alone products! This will undoubtedly expose more hobbyists to the power of Neptune products.

 

[TerenceF]

My normal routine is to hit the feed (30 min pause) button on my return pump and skimmer when I feed my fish. Even the water draining down from my overflow will raise the sump level by an inch, so I have to either unplug the ATK every time I feed or reset it once the system starts up again. If my protein skimmer shuts off because the container is full, the water level in the sump rises about ⅜" - just enough to trigger the backup sensor.

Another issue I've run into is that the occasional snail or other factor that may temporarily lower the flow through the return pipes can cause small variations in the level of the return chamber. Normally these aren't a big deal, but with the ATK it has been enough to trigger the over fill alarm.

There is an alternative (undocumented) configuration you can do with the mount for situations such as yours. You can turn the mount over and rearrange the sensors so the #1 is in the float valve hole, and the float valve is in the #1 hole. This gives more gap for water rise. One would also likely need to adjust the float valve angle as well.

It should also be noted that if your feed mode is less than 10 minutes, the alarm will not happen either.

 

[FullBoreReefer]

I sold my ATK to a buddy, his ATO was a gravity fed float valve. We modified his bracket so "Low OS#1" stayed in current position, we slightly enlarged hole two and moved the float to that position, and the"High OS#2" was moved to the top hole. He then used a solenoid instead of the PMUP.

Solenoid stays open 24/7.
Low OS#1 sends alert of Low Sump.
Float valve regulates water level.
High OS#1 sends alert of High Sump and closes solenoid.

We set it up as standard optical sensors and manually programmed outlets, we did not use the ATK "tasks" set up since we had moved things around.

 

[cincyjim]

That's very clever and much safer! I didn't like how the ATK was an all in one unit which is why I did a DIY with the individual parts.

 

[sleepydoc]

Great to see Neptune making their products work as stand alone products! This will undoubtedly expose more hobbyists to the power of Neptune products.

I agree - it's a smart decision of Neptune to make products that are can be used both ways. Also helps ease the sticker shock if you're getting a controller system.

There is an alternative (undocumented) configuration you can do with the mount for situations such as yours. You can turn the mount over and rearrange the sensors so the #1 is in the float valve hole, and the float valve is in the #1 hole. This gives more gap for water rise. One would also likely need to adjust the float valve angle as well.

It should also be noted that if your feed mode is less than 10 minutes, the alarm will not happen either.

Thanks for the tip, Terrence. You should put that on the web site - I think it would be helpful for other people, too.

Like many/most pumps that have this feature, the 'feed mode' on my return pump shuts it off for 30 minutes. In theory, a 10 minute timer might work, unless the ATK timer was 20 seconds slow, the extra time at start up for the water level to drop below the sensor would still probably be enough to trigger an alarm.

I thought about getting a second mount to mount the secondary sensor higher up, but I would still have issues at startup. In the end, I have a Tunze osmolator that worked perfectly and the ATK that needed futzing with, so I went back to the Tunze

 

[KHahnOkc]

Everyone needs this info on ATK

Everyone needs this info on ATK

There is an alternative (undocumented) configuration you can do with the mount for situations such as yours. You can turn the mount over and rearrange the sensors so the #1 is in the float valve hole, and the float valve is in the #1 hole. This gives more gap for water rise. One would also likely need to adjust the float valve angle as well.

It should also be noted that if your feed mode is less than 10 minutes, the alarm will not happen either.

Terence - I hope Neptune will add this to the instructions. There a many of us having this issue due to flow changes, etc. The closeness of the opticals is very concervative for redundancy and required that I remove the second optical and reposition elsewhere, similar to Tunze. You should also sell the mangetic clips for the OS-1-M optical sensors separately or include on in the ATK. This would allow flexibility in the set up of the ATK. Also, BRS had to send me an entire sensor because the one I ordered separately came with the clip missing when all I needed was the clip or the magnet and clip. BRS is great that way!