Remote ATO? ATO units?

[Capt_Cully]

Anyone have their ATO vat in a remote location? I'm thinking of putting mine in a closet and running some larger bore RO tubing under the floor back up into the sump (under the tank) in the next room over.

Any issues?

I have a BNIB JBJ ATO I've never used. On my 180 I ran a Reef Fanatic ATO, which is pretty beat up after almost 4 yrs of service, BUT it never failed, not once. Opinions on keep using the RF? Any JBJ Homers wanna chime in on performance/reliability?

 

[Conesus_Kid]

One repeated mishap that I've had with ATO units has been my own fault: forgetting to unplug it when draining the tank during a water change.

That being said, other mishaps were not my fault, nor the fault of the ATO unit. In one case, a snail got jammed in the drain plumbing and caused the rate of the return pump to exceed the rate of the drain. Water overflowed the top of the display, but the ATO replaced all of the missing water until the reservoir was empty. The other issue I've had is float valves sticking in the closed (thankfully) position.

I've since moved to a gravity fed system where I use a valve to drip the water into the sump. It honestly wasn't that hard to get dialed in, and the water level stays consistent in the sump. I now sleep much better at night knowing that at least the topoff won't nuke the tank.

If you are working against gravity, I strongly recommend using a small enough reservoir that, were it to empty entirely into the display, won't throw off the salinity too badly.

 

[Capt_Cully]

Ha, yes, I don't know how many water changes I've done where I've put 10-25 gallons of RO into the water collumn by forgetting to unplug the ATO. I'm planning on having a water sealed floor under my tank with an emergency drain, in case of flooding. How that is arranged is another story completely. If I flood our living room floor, it's curtains for the tank.

Care to elaborate on your gravity/drip system?

 

[naprestsleep]

I use a peristaltic pump for my ATO, slow rate so i don't have to worry so much about issue during a water changes or if it get stuck on. I also have a switch on my ATO to turn it off if I want too.

You should be fine with it remote as long as your pump has enough umph to get the water to the sump.

 

[captain7359]

I have my ro vat outside of my sump room and pump through about 20' of tubing into the sump. i made my own dual float ato controll so I can't comment on either of yours, but if it works and has two floats I'd stick with it.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Peristaltic pump here, too. Reservoir is in basement, maybe 12' from the tank's location. Peristaltic pumps are great because they don't really care about head pressure, and only need a thin piece of airline - much easier to route through walls/floors than a big hose or pipe.

 

[jacksonpt]

I've got my bucket around the corner in the next room. I use standard airline tubing and an aqualifter controlled by a float switch. No problems.

 

[Capt_Cully]

I was using an aqualifter for my kalkwasser, but that was a slow drip. My 180 was topping off up to 3 gallons a day during summer days. Can they handle big volumes like that?

 

[Conesus_Kid]

Care to elaborate on your gravity/drip system?

Ok, here's 4,000 words for you:

The RO/DI water enters the storage vessel through the white tubing. (There's a float valve inside the container.) The clear tubing is a failsafe. If the float valve malfunctions, the water will pass through the clear tubing back to the sink.

The water exits through the valve and blue tubing. (The uniseal and valve are there for me to fill buckets with RO/DI water if needed.)

From there, it goes through another valve that I use to control the drip rate, then through the kalk reactor:

After the kalk reactor, it just drips into the sump near a Maxi-jet I keep in there (white tubing).

 

[naprestsleep]

BRS top off peristaltic pump does 50ml a minute so it can do 3 gallons a day running around 4hrs.

 

[Capt_Cully]

So do you ever have to play catch up? Or are you just that good? I found I had a lot of fluctuation. I'm not sure this would suffice? I mean I don't sleep that well anyway, but I also can't afford to flood our new livingroom.

 

[Conesus_Kid]

On occasion, but not very often. Having a steady drip rate cuts down on the fluctuations you'd see without any topoff.

This also helps when the skimmer goes nuts for some unknown reason and pulls a few gallons out. If I were using ATO, I wouldn't even realize that a bunch of saltwater was replaced with fresh.

 

[Capt_Cully]

In keeping with "fail safe's", I was planning on having one on my reservoir as you do. I also want one on the sump itself.

Here is my plan. Run the fail save into the floor then back to the same drain tube as the drain for the utility sink. The same sink the RO will be hooked to. Also, run a failsafe into the floor and across to the same drain line.

The plumbing going up is to the sink and the adjacent clothes washer. The drain, PVC, is from the sink. I'd like to link drains INTO that PVC from the RO reservoir, and the sump in case of overflow of one or both of them.

Can this be done? Would I need check valves in place to prevent back flow every time I used the sink itself or waste water from the RO unit.

I know this is a pain, but if I get it right the first time, it's all worth it.

 

[magdelan]

Mark, it sounds like you are doing something similar to what I have done/am doing. I have my sump drilled with a one inch bulkhead on the drain side. this bulkhead is connected to a one inch pipe with a ball valve. This pipe is connected dirrectly to my main sewer drain in the basement. This pipe is also tee'd off to my ro/salt water bucket. It is connected to a pump which is connected to a switch under my stand. Now, I need to incorporate a fail safe drain in my sump in case of power outages. I am running more water in the system than the sump can handle incase of an outage. I plan plumbing a pipe from the current water change pipe up and over my sump with a U on it. This way, when the water gets with in a couple inches of the rim, it will drain into the sewer. I hope you were able to follow here, cause I'm not even sure that I did. Check my new thread for pics that I'll post in a bit.

 

[pascal32]

Auto-top off is a dangerous thing, but quite frankly I couldn't do without it.

my setup:
* RO/DI fills a 5 gallon bucket with a regular float cut-off (if it fails it will drain safely)
* dual magnetic float switches on the sump (if the primary fails I take an extra gallon or two before the secondary overrides
* Reefkeeper runs 50ml/minute dosing pump 10 minutes out of the hour

The dosing pump afford two safeties - (1) the rate is slow enough that I wont spike the system in the event of a failure. (2) it can't back-siphon

The Reefkeeper is set to 10 minutes out of the hour for (1) limit how much I can top off per hour (2) cut down on the DI canister getting beat due to TDS creap

It's not bullet proof, but a lot can go wrong without taking down the reef.
the thought of maxijets and mags as topoff pumps makes my stomach turn!

 

[Capt_Cully]

Thanks for the input. I may very well run both ATOs. One as a double top off one as a double shut off, unless I completely confuse myself.

Can anyone comment on my proposed plumbing scheme, accessing the sink drain. Any code violations or potential pitfalls? Would check valves be advantageous? Or unnecessary?

 

[Capt_Cully]

Somebody help a brother out with my plumbing question please :wave:

 

[pascal32]

I'm not sure I fully processed what you would like to do (it's been a long week!). Is the question whether it is safe to drain into the same drain as the sink? absolutely! I'm no plumber - with that out of the way, I would select the location to tap as one that is most likely not to be affected if the U trap on the sink gets clogged. Maybe a side tap to the main stack (assuming you have PVC and not cast iron)? The only notable code I know with drains is that they are supposed to slope at some degree (8:1?) not sure that applies to fish tanks though!

 

[mr.maroonsalty]

Drains also need to be within 8 feet of a stack, island sinks are some other kind of expense; plumbing is a little more than crap doesn't flow uphill and payday's Friday. I don't know but i don't think a check valve works in a non pressure situation, there are back flow preventers but they work with pressure and gravity. Their must be something, but I'm not a plumber. My main floor is soapstone its awesome for me, aside from it being soft its impervious to nearly everything including saltwater. My thought is to create a pan in the bottom of my cabinet by having its floor 2" below the doors, caulk the joints, and a coat of urethane and it should hold most sump spills. If I was super worried about overflow onto the floor I would put a pan under the tank with a drain and another drain in the sump. It might be easiest to forget about tapping into a waste pipe and plumb to something like a basement utility sink, shower pan, washing machine drain, toilet... Good chance to convince the other the need for your own downstairs bath?