Why you don't plumb your RO/DI directly to your ATO reservoir.

kmbyrnes

kmbyrnes

New member
A reef tank is a complicated interaction of many critical components. Newcomers may not grasp all the possible ways things can go wrong.

Over the years I've read questions from those starting out asking why they can't just plumb the output of their RO/DI directly to their ATO reservoir or worse, to the DT, with a float switch.
The answer is always the same. Everything will fail eventually. Just because it has worked and you keep it maintained doesn't mean it will work forever. And none of us are immune to it, regardless of experience.

This time it was my ATO unit.

I woke yesterday AM to find the glass divider of my 125 fully submerged and water trickling down the side of the tank under the plastic rim. Nothing major on the floor yet but only barely. The sump level was about 1/2 inch below the rim and a good 2 inches ABOVE the level of both floats for the ATO switch. The entire 10 gallon ATO reservoir, filled the previous night, had been pumped dry. I can only assume that the extra depth the drain line was submerged caused back pressure and allowed the DT to absorb some of the extra water, or the flooding might have been much worse.

If I had done what some folks plan to do, and hooked my RO/DO unit to the ATO reservoir, my entire family room would have been flooded. And I'm sure my better half would not have been amused.

So ask your questions here. There are more experienced folks to help you avoid mistakes.
 
Plus the TDS is typically higher the first few seconds/minute or so when it starts so short cycling an RO/DI will just lead to more TDS being allowed into the tank..

Glad you only had a minor incident..
 
My motto is 'never hardpipe a city water supply to your tank, no matter how much you trust your system.'
SO, so glad it wasn't worse.
 
And here's my most recent story......

My "ATO" is manual. I have hard plumbing from the top off barrel (55g) to both the DT in the living room and the FT in the basement. When they need topped off, about every other day, I do it myself using a mag18 in the barrel and a remote control to turn it on and off. The hard plumbing ends at a plastic water spigot at each tank, so I just turn on the remote and open the spigot as needed.

FOOLPROOF!!!!!

Well, apparently not for this fool. I was in the basement applying the 5th or 6th coat of wipe-on polyurethane to a pair of cabinets for my wife (2 cabinets, 42 drawers, LOTS of polyurethane fumes!). I went over to the fishroom door to shut it to help keep out the fumes and noticed that the water level in the FT was low, so I turned on the remote and opened the spigot. And then, perhaps I saw a butterfly.....or the poly fumes got to me......or I just forgot. Finished up that coat of finish and went to dinner. After dinner I checked the DT and need to add some water, but none came out when I opened the spigot. Hmmmmmm. Went downstairs, opened the door to the fishroom, and went squish. Apparently a 60g FT/50g sump (with about a 15g buffer) won't hold an additional 55g of FRESH, not salt, water. I spent the next 3 hours bonding with the shop vac and the next several days bringing the salinity back up to 1.026 from the 1.010 that it had fallen to.

Moral of the story? Anything and EVERYTHING can and will fail at some point for some reason.

Be Prepared.

To prevent the flood from happening again, I now have an emergency overflow from the max level of the sump into the basement drain. It won't prevent the salinity drop, but it will keep the floor dry!
 
I have my RO/DI plumbed into my ATO reservoir. That said, the feed to the RO/DI is controlled by an Apex optical sensor and then backed up with a manual float valve. I've tested it several times and the float valve seems like a very reliable backup. Also, it take approximately 2 hours to fill my ATO. So, I set the maximum open time on the solenoid to 2.5 hours. Worst case scenario is that I end up with a half gallon of fresh water in my stand.
 
I have mine plumbed into my ATO as well. Thankfully my ATO is only a 5 gallon bucket. However if I had the space, I would do it differently.

Corey
 
How much do you trust the valve on your automatic ice maker? Same setup but likely much worse since it has full water pressure behind it and not the restriction of the RO system.
 
I had a snail redirect a powerhead and shoot water out of the tank all over the wood floor. It ran through the floor and ruined the felt on my pool table downstairs. It's a risky business keeping a huge container full of sea water in your house. That's why allot of landlords don't allow tanks or water beds. At least most water beds don't have a bunch of marine organisms in them to rot in the walls and floor.
 
billdogg said:
And here's my most recent story......

My "ATO" is manual. I have hard plumbing from the top off barrel (55g) to both the DT in the living room and the FT in the basement. When they need topped off, about every other day, I do it myself using a mag18 in the barrel and a remote control to turn it on and off. The hard plumbing ends at a plastic water spigot at each tank, so I just turn on the remote and open the spigot as needed.

FOOLPROOF!!!!!

Well, apparently not for this fool. I was in the basement applying the 5th or 6th coat of wipe-on polyurethane to a pair of cabinets for my wife (2 cabinets, 42 drawers, LOTS of polyurethane fumes!). I went over to the fishroom door to shut it to help keep out the fumes and noticed that the water level in the FT was low, so I turned on the remote and opened the spigot. And then, perhaps I saw a butterfly.....or the poly fumes got to me......or I just forgot. Finished up that coat of finish and went to dinner. After dinner I checked the DT and need to add some water, but none came out when I opened the spigot. Hmmmmmm. Went downstairs, opened the door to the fishroom, and went squish. Apparently a 60g FT/50g sump (with about a 15g buffer) won't hold an additional 55g of FRESH, not salt, water. I spent the next 3 hours bonding with the shop vac and the next several days bringing the salinity back up to 1.026 from the 1.010 that it had fallen to.

Moral of the story? Anything and EVERYTHING can and will fail at some point for some reason.

Be Prepared.

To prevent the flood from happening again, I now have an emergency overflow from the max level of the sump into the basement drain. It won't prevent the salinity drop, but it will keep the floor dry!
Click to expand...

The only thing that failed was that darned human memory. There was no equipment fail. I have lost count on the number of times my failure led to flooding or some other minor (major - its relative). Tough to make the human process redundant.
 
billdogg said:
And here's my most recent story......

My "ATO" is manual. I have hard plumbing from the top off barrel (55g) to both the DT in the living room and the FT in the basement. When they need topped off, about every other day, I do it myself using a mag18 in the barrel and a remote control to turn it on and off. The hard plumbing ends at a plastic water spigot at each tank, so I just turn on the remote and open the spigot as needed.

FOOLPROOF!!!!!

Well, apparently not for this fool. I was in the basement applying the 5th or 6th coat of wipe-on polyurethane to a pair of cabinets for my wife (2 cabinets, 42 drawers, LOTS of polyurethane fumes!). I went over to the fishroom door to shut it to help keep out the fumes and noticed that the water level in the FT was low, so I turned on the remote and opened the spigot. And then, perhaps I saw a butterfly.....or the poly fumes got to me......or I just forgot. Finished up that coat of finish and went to dinner. After dinner I checked the DT and need to add some water, but none came out when I opened the spigot. Hmmmmmm. Went downstairs, opened the door to the fishroom, and went squish. Apparently a 60g FT/50g sump (with about a 15g buffer) won't hold an additional 55g of FRESH, not salt, water. I spent the next 3 hours bonding with the shop vac and the next several days bringing the salinity back up to 1.026 from the 1.010 that it had fallen to.

Moral of the story? Anything and EVERYTHING can and will fail at some point for some reason.

Be Prepared.

To prevent the flood from happening again, I now have an emergency overflow from the max level of the sump into the basement drain. It won't prevent the salinity drop, but it will keep the floor dry!
Click to expand...

The only thing that failed was that darned human memory. There was no equipment fail. I have lost count on the number of times my failure led to flooding or some other minor (major - its relative). Tough to make the human process redundant.

We actually use equipment systems with redundancy because it is more reliable than the human system.
 
Do float switches work better when they're gravity fed vs. stopping a pressurized feed, or will they still fail even with that little pressure?
 
Lower pressure would certainly lower the likelihood of failure but failures are often caused by detritus in the seal or something impeding the movement of the float (snails, power cords etc).
 
Subpilot said:
Lower pressure would certainly lower the likelihood of failure but failures are often caused by detritus in the seal or something impeding the movement of the float (snails, power cords etc).
Click to expand...

That would just mean they don't open though, which while bad isn't as bad as flooding the tank with the entirety of your ATO reservoir, right? (since you'd just be losing water to evap. vs. dumping gallons in overnight)
 
Another potential float valve failure mode could be float losing buoyancy due to leak or as pointed out in video an adjustable float getting loose.
 
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