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ATO safety question

Ayman

Ayman

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I’m currently in the process of upgrading my ATO reservoir from a 7-gallon container to a 30-gallon one. I’ve been using the Red Sea ATO system for about a year now without any issues, and it’s been working reliably. However, with the larger reservoir, I’m becoming more cautious about the potential risks—specifically, the concern that if the ATO sensor were to fail, it could result in the entire 30 gallons of freshwater being dumped into the tank. That would obviously be a nightmare, potentially causing a major salinity swing or even flooding. I’m reaching out to see what other reefers are doing to safeguard against this kind of failure and to prevent sensor malfunctions from leading to catastrophic issues.
 
Ayman said:
I’m currently in the process of upgrading my ATO reservoir from a 7-gallon container to a 30-gallon one. I’ve been using the Red Sea ATO system for about a year now without any issues, and it’s been working reliably. However, with the larger reservoir, I’m becoming more cautious about the potential risks—specifically, the concern that if the ATO sensor were to fail, it could result in the entire 30 gallons of freshwater being dumped into the tank. That would obviously be a nightmare, potentially causing a major salinity swing or even flooding. I’m reaching out to see what other reefers are doing to safeguard against this kind of failure and to prevent sensor malfunctions from leading to catastrophic issues.
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Do you have a controller? If I recall correctly you have an Apex? Can you set a maximum on time?
 
Ayman said:
Yes I have an Apex, but to be honest I have no idea what maximum on time mean lol. Or how to do that I need to do more research
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I’m not sure how to do it on Apex, but I know it’s possible on Hydros so Apex should be able to as well. But it would stop your ATO from getting stuck on and overfilling your display
 
“Max on time” is having a limited amount of time the to pump can run for. So if ato usually takes 30 sec to fill than set “max on time” to 45 sec. Or if your tank evaporates is 2 gallons and your ato is 10 gal/hr, set “max on time” to 30 minutes a day. Something like that so it can’t dump 30 gallons
 
Since I have a 'smart' home setup ( Samsung Smartthings ), I connected the ATO power adaptor to a smart plug and use a moisture sensor close to the top of my tank as a safety to turn off the smart plug...just some simple extra safety
 
The Red Sea ATO isn't like other ATO's. It has a controller built into it, a solid state level sensor (4 discrete exposed metal contacts to sense water lever as good, low, or high) and a separate leak sensor. You can't easily turn the pump off without also turning off the controller because the whole system runs through the controller.

The controller is smart enough to turn the pump off if it runs continuously for too long, and gives you an alert through the app. The app also allows you to monitor daily pump operation/volume dispensed to see if things are running normally. The leak sensor shuts the pump operation off too and gives you a notification.

The solid state design makes these sensors pretty foolproof. I occasionally spray things in my sump down with rodi water, and that might help the sensor stay clean, but realistically as soon as water touches it, the next level is getting tripped.

I run this ato on my 300 gallon tank with ~30 gallon resivoir and I don't have any backup to shut this down other than the designed parts it comes with. I could imagine a float switch installed higher in the sump that would mechanically shut the tube off, or some additional contact/float switch sensor doing a similar thing but it feels like overkill to me.
 
Trusting Red Sea software/hardware is like trusting their tanks won't leak.....

I've had the RS ATO+ run long and dumped extra RODI water into my tank. I think it was due to the contacts on the sensor being dirty.

I don't think Apex max on time will work since the RS ATO+ is always drawing power. In my previous set up I was thinking of maybe using a break out box with a float switch, magnetic optical sensor or the LLS Liquid Level Sensor. Never got around to looking into those options in depth tho.
 
I got the MOS positioned an inch higher than the optimal water line in my sump to cut power to the ATO if triggered.

As long as you maintain cleaning out filter socks if you run them, it should prevent the ATO from emptying into your tank.
 
MarcosD said:
I think @Alexander1312 just replaced his Red Sea ATO because it overfilled if I’m not wrong? I’ve heard many stories of it overfilling. So not sure how good the built in safety people are mentioning is
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Yes, and both scenarios, it filled too much and not enough. I had it for 1.5 years or so. When it works, it’s good. I do no longer recommend this. I wish someone would come with a Aqualogic/Ranco type of ATO system (yes, I know I made fun of this in another post). Switched both tanks to the Hydros ATO, which feels flimsy, both the pump and the sensor compared to the Red Sea, but the integration with Hydros is great.
 
Alexander1312 said:
Yes, and both scenarios, it filled too much and not enough. I had it for 1.5 years or so. When it works, it’s good. I do no longer recommend this. I wish someone would come with a Aqualogic/Ranco type of ATO system (yes, I know I made fun of this in another post). Switched both tanks to the Hydros ATO, which feels flimsy, both the pump and the sensor compared to the Red Sea, but the integration with Hydros is great.
Click to expand...

I like the hydros ato so far it has a time limit anything longer than one min continous it automatically shuts off the ato pump. It tops off the tank a few times though out the day for a maybe 15 seconds as water evaporates.
 
I have had three -
The tunze-hated it as it beeped constantly-and yes you can turn it off -and couldn’t access it if I was away from home-that is -no clue if it was too low.

Apex-liked it a lot initially. Was nice between sensors and the manual float cut off. Also liked that I could program the pump to stop at whatever time I wanted (ie 20, 30, or 40 seconds)

However I found that over time the sensors would give out and may not realize it at first (ie stays open or closed). I also had some other weird stuff going on with it in that it effectively stopped twice a day in the end (had to unplug and plug power back into FMM) Neptune couldn’t solve it.

Now on to Red Sea. Ironically the first sensor was defective so it would run to its time limit. Never impacted salinity on a 65 gal system. I cannot recall max time. Nice thing is-once it does that-it stops until you reset it. So it won’t run to infinity.

There is a way to do that with apex but it’s not by default. Not knowing that- I had not done that and when we had our chaeto reactor malfunction- it did perpetuatelly kept draining the 10 gal ato and nuked the tank 7 yrs ago this month.


I have had a couple replacements since the for Red Sea -it now has internal sensors that tells you when it’s busted -click a link and they send you a new one. So far so good in my book.

It has worked well for the last couple years.
 
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