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Chromis

Chromis

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How do you make sure a water reservoir with a large volume compared to your tank doesn’t flood your tank/house and kill your corals? I’m thinking along these lines - what do you think? Is there a better way?

-RO unit outputs to a large reservoir under the house
- manual, supervised plug-in of a pump in the reservoir when it’s necessary to refill a smaller water top-up reservoir in the tank stand (small enough reservoir that if it totally emptied into your tank, the salinity wouldn’t drop enough to kill anything right away)
-regular automatic top up from the small reservoir to the tank
 
What everyone said above.

I have the following:
  • RO/DI unit that feeds a 5 gallon reservoir (HPDE material) that's next to my tank.
  • The reservoir has a mechanical float in it, that'll stop the RO/DI at the top. My RO/DI has an automatic shutoff valve.
  • I also have a Solenoid that is controlled by my Apex, which will close off the output of the RO/DI based on a high level sensor (just below the mech float valve). And it will open at the bottom with another sensor. It basically auto fills for me when I'm not home. Otherwise I'll just turn off my RO/DI feed and open it up manually. This basically will keep my reservoir from overflowing.
  • I then use the Neptune ATK system to do a topoff. It has two optical sensors in my sump, plus a mechanical float valve. It also times how often my pump is on normally, so if there's an abnormal amount of fill, it knows something is wrong and will stop the pump.
 
I do exactly what you are describing here. I've always been wary of too much gadgetry when a simple float valve has always served me well so far.

I do need to manually refill my top off container ~ 2 times a week, but I'm also adding vinegar/Kalk+2 to the RO so I don't need dosing gadgets too.

Wow - I sound old all of a sudden :)
 
My rodi feeds into a 55 gallon drum that I refill about every other month or so. It’s got s float valve on the top of the barrel so I just open the valve on the rodi at night and in the morning it’s full and I turn the valve for the rodi off again. I just have the Neptune atk dispense it to the tank. It uses two optical sensors and a mechanical float valve. That’s enough protection for me and the maintenance for the whole thing is almost nil.
 
Gablami said:
Have apex optical sensors for a high water mark, and have it kill the power to ato pump.


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Good idea but I don’t have those gadgets... I’m holding out to buy when alkalinity monitoring is available.
 
Flagg37 said:
My rodi feeds into a 55 gallon drum that I refill about every other month or so. It’s got s float valve on the top of the barrel so I just open the valve on the rodi at night and in the morning it’s full and I turn the valve for the rodi off again. I just have the Neptune atk dispense it to the tank. It uses two optical sensors and a mechanical float valve. That’s enough protection for me and the maintenance for the whole thing is almost nil.
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It sounds like the ATO are pretty reliable. Personally my Tunze optical sensor did not work if it turned in in the high water level state and my sump would fill to the physical stop limit. So I did buy a Neptune ATO but haven’t installed it yet. I still need to contact Tunze about a replacement or refund.
 
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