Crash and burn. (1 Viewer)

[Gators27606]

Wife called me yesterday around 4:30 saying my sump was completely full and the tank is milky looking and everything looks bad. The cause is auto top off didn't do its job or over did its job, depends on how you look at it. My salinity less than 1.000 for many hours. I did a 99.99% water change last night and going 75% until water start clearing up. Lost 50% of corals, 1 GBTA 2 Sherman rose and 1 star burst anemones, 3 awesome clams, 4 fish that included a large purple tang. A bright florescent yellow carpet anemone that I got from 3CC. Luckily I have not lost any of my high end Aussie corals, man they are sure tough. This hobby sucks at this point. But as you all know its addicting as hell. I might need therapy or a punching bag LOL.
So what Auto Top Off do you use???

 

[inigomontoya]

Sorry to hear man, that sucks. Autotopoff.com is real popular, I just use the Digital Aquatics ones with my Reefkeeper. Most important thing with this style of float switch is to use 2 floats. Mine is set up so that only one of the two floats can trigger the switch on but either of the two will turn it off. Keeps there from being a snail buildup or other problem.

 

[steveb]

Sucks I hate to hear that...

I have a tunze osmolator (it has been very reliable, has a electronic eye for the low water level sensor and float for high water cut off -- I have never had the low level sensor not work). But I have had issues where skimmer goes nuts, overflows onto floor, tank water level drops and tunze pump happily kicks on to replenish it. So I wouldn't call it an ATO failure but something to keep an eye on.

 

[Gators27606]

Luck my wife came home when she did or I would have have 30 gals on the floor.

 

[Mark L.]

Ouch! Sorry man. Keep your chin up, scream in a pillow, and visit FJW for more livestock LOL. You just have to keep moving forward and not let it get you down.

Oh and +1 for Autotopoff.com. I use their stuff on all my systems.

 

[toefu]

and also put your topoff device on the apex.. i set my topoff to turn in only long enough to fill a few gallons a day at most. (my evap is about 1-2 gallons a day) so in worst case, i would only have an extra 3-4 gallons in the tank.

 

[RC]

Sorry to hear it.

I agree with toefu, I keep my ato on a controller and only let it run for 1 min in the morning and 1 min in the middle of the night. Just a secondary safety.

 

[d2mini]

Oh man, sorry to hear!!!

Another vote for autotopoff and another vote for using your controller to run it a specified max amount of time.

My Profilux uses level sensors for ATO and it has the max run time safety feature built in. Would be nervous without it.

But i never had a problem with the autotopoff unit when i was running that.
And on my cube i just used a regular cheap float valve and gravity. If the float valve failed it was most likely to fail in the off position.

 

[reeftopia]

Auto top off keeps the reef stores really happy. Never heard of one not failing eventually even with backups

 

[RR-MAN]

Sorry to hear that Gator.

I love gadgets but man nothing beats gravity fed $5 float switch when it comes to top off. I have used it all from Elos Osmo Controller to tunze.

 

[rparker2112]

I used autotopoff.com on my nano....until I took it apart and made my own from their design with a relay for less than 20 bucks. Even has a backup float. Works peefect and I test the "backup" float once a month.

Sent from my Home Phone using Tapatalk

 

[OceansX]

Sorry Gators to hear of your mishap.
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I would definitely keep an ATO, though. It immensely improved my reefing keeping experience.
It helps out like having a timer for lights. My advice is to plan your ATO, so that if it dumps its
reservoir into the tank, the damage would be minimal. My reservoir is 5 gallons for a 75 display.

About once a week, when the reservoir is low/empty, I open a valve to the RO and let
it fill it up until a float in the reservoir stops the RO filling it up, AND I set the kitchen timer to an hour
just in case the float fails. To fully automate, I plan having my controller open a solenoid once a week
for an hour to fill the reservoir.

Glad to hear the aussie corals made it.

 

[toefu]

you basically explained my entire setup oceansx. my topoff bin is only 4 gallons in general. i turn on the topoff switches 3 times a day for a few minutes each time. at most it pumps a few extra gallons, since the aqualifter can only push 3-4 gallons an hour.

On top of it, my RODI unit has its input blocked off by a low pressure solenoid from ebay controlled by the controller as well. when i'm making salt though, i'll use my apex to turn on the solenoid all day long to make saltwater.