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Mike Savage 
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 Posted: October 06 2013 at 11:41am |
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Eric owns and runs Aquarium Creations in Draper. Grainger Industrial Supply has a location in Salt Lake City and one in Ogden.
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chuckfu
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Posted: October 06 2013 at 12:14pm |
 Mark Peterson wrote:
Mark Peterson wrote:
Float switches can fail and setting up complicated apparatus just before going on vacation is a recipe for disaster. I've seen it dozens of times and had it happen to me.
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Me too.
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Mark, You replied to your own statement...... funny! 
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Try, try, try, then give up!
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WhiteReef
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Posted: October 06 2013 at 12:17pm |
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Thanks for the info Mike!
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Richard
Former 47G Column Reef, Magna
20" x 18" x 31"H
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Akira
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Posted: October 06 2013 at 6:15pm |
Grainger is a local industrial supply house. Her is a link to what I used.
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WhiteReef
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Posted: October 07 2013 at 3:30pm |
@FAT I found the post you did on yours FAT's ATO BuildKurt - do you use a switch box like Fat?
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Richard
Former 47G Column Reef, Magna
20" x 18" x 31"H
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Akira
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Posted: October 08 2013 at 2:35am |
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I do not use they relay and phone charger . I just use the neutral as my switch leg through the floats which lets me use a smaller junction box ,1 less plug to contend with and 2 less things to fail . ( relay and charger ) Besides the neutral never carries any return voltage unless the pump is running and a small pump without me looking at the specs and doing the math imo is very minimal. I have used this same set up for about 2 years now with only one issue. A pump cord held my primary float down and it pumped until my safety shut it off. It only raised the water level in my sump about 1 1/2 ". And it was my own fault after doing maintenance and not looping the cord correctly.
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WhiteReef
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Posted: October 20 2013 at 12:28pm |
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Well, I guess that it was good not to have the auto top off setup. My vacation was riddled with several mishaps. The first was our room reservation having issues, then a bad tire, dislocating my shoulder, lights not turning on one day, and my clam finally biting the bullet. The death of my clam made for a smelly return. All could think is there was for sure going to be a huge mess if I had set one up.
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Richard
Former 47G Column Reef, Magna
20" x 18" x 31"H
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WhiteReef
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Posted: November 05 2013 at 1:40pm |
After some additional research I chose to buy a pre-built ATO by TUNZE off of Bulk Reef Supply. So far things look good, but it has only been setup for a day. TUNZE OSMOLATOR UNIVERSAL 3155 AUTO TOP OFF
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Richard
Former 47G Column Reef, Magna
20" x 18" x 31"H
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ksmart
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Posted: November 05 2013 at 1:56pm |
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I really like the pre-built ones. I think you will be happy. I have a JBJ (not currently setup, it was setup on my jbj 24 gallon) and I had it up for a few months with no issues. I had a no-name brand that I picked up off a friend that he got on ebay and it worked ok until the power went out. When the power came back on it fried the system even though it was plugged into a surge protector..
In the past I used a gravity fed ato that was plumbed into my sump and I like that a lot, it was simple but I dont have sumps on my current setups.
sorry to hear about your clam :(
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speyside712
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Posted: November 06 2013 at 1:01pm |
Good choice on the TUNZE, i have the same one myself. Its awesome. Most expensive, but definitely the nicest one out there. The laser eye is the most accurate one available, and due to it hanging over the waters center its nearly impossible for a snail to get on it and block the eye, unlike a float switch, or float valve. Just make sure the pump in the autotop off is located below the tubing output in your sump. This prevents it from continuing to syphon after it turns off. To prevent back syphon from the tank back to the topoff container, keep the tubing output high in the sump, so that its not underwater. The only issue i've found so far is due to the design of my (and most) sumps. How the baffles are set up, all evaporation that occurs is visible in the final section of the sump, where the return pump is located. Because of this thats where your autotop off sensor has to be located. The problem is, if one or both of your overflows get clogged, the level in the sump will go down - triggering the autotop off to refill the sump. This would continue until your autotop off emptied itself, with your display tank overflowing. To remedy this I have my controller set up to kill the power to the auto topoff if it runs for more than 15 seconds. Solves everything :) But you need a controller of course.
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speyside712
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Posted: November 06 2013 at 1:09pm |
I might also suggest putting your return pump on a float switch, shutting if off if the water level in the sump gets to low so that it doesn't burn itself out and start your house on fire. If your overflows gets clogged and your ATO cant keep up with the dropping water level (prior to the controller shutting the ATO off) it will kill the return pump. Normally this would only happen temporarily until the ATO catches up and opens the float switch again, but you can set your controller to do this: - once the float switch has shut down the return pump, don't turn it back on until I manually turn it back on. This also prevents the ATO from ever malfunctioning and filling your whole tank with fresh water. All this is probably overkill, but i like to think of every possible scenario and have a fail safe so I don't flood my house (and my neighbors, living in a condo above other people), not to mention kill all the fish.
Edited by speyside712 - November 06 2013 at 1:11pm
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Ann_A
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Posted: November 06 2013 at 2:28pm |
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I can't help but notice that all of those fail-safes (great ideas though they are) would only be necessary in the event of the overflow getting clogged. I would think you'd just start off with a fail-safe overflow design such as the bean animal or herbie and would probably be fine. Although it never hurts to be too careful.
Edited by Ann_A - November 06 2013 at 6:45pm
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speyside712
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Posted: November 06 2013 at 3:42pm |
I actually have a herbie right now (thats the one with 2 overflow pipes, at different heights right?) I don't think there is ever a way to ensure your overflow doesn't clog. You just have to prepare for the worst in my opinion haha. I think i'm just a little paranoid about possible disasters! haha, you could probably say i'm the king of fail safes. I have quite a few other fail-safes on my system as well. For instance: I have strainers on both overflows to prevent a snail crawling down them. I have a screen above my overflow box so nothing large than the teeth can get into the overflow box. I have a leak detector that shuts off my return pump in the event of water on the floor. I wired a new outlet from my circuit breaker so that my tank is running on two different circuits - incase 1 trips it doesnt kill the power to everything. The whole tank runs over 1000 watts so all of it being on one circuit seemed like an overload. All the outlets used are GFIs My controller has 16 controllable outlets that turn on and off 3 fans, lights, heaters, my ATO, return pump, 2 dosing pumps, and even the skimmer (if the temperature skyrockets, incase its the pump overheating, this happened to me once). I tried to think of every possible thing that could go wrong and put a fix in place! Either overflow cloging both overflows clog return pump clogs power outage single outlet(s) failing circuit breaker trips heater stuck on/off ATO stuck on/off Dosing pump stuck on/off If you know of any other things that can break let me know and maybe I can come up with a solution!
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Scott B
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Posted: November 06 2013 at 4:50pm |
^ 
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28g jbj led nano, 150 g mixed reef, skimz skimmer, AI blue sol's, Reef Angel controller, wp40's, aquamedic reef doser
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WhiteReef
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Posted: November 14 2013 at 10:08am |
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Thanks for the feedback from everyone on this. I do have a concern that came up the other day. We had a power bump that caused the unit to fail. When I reset it, it started working just fine. When I tried to reproduce the issue by turning all the power off then on, it worked fine without issues. Any idea why this would happen?
I do have the two sensors on the same bracket, so when the water flows into the sump it trips the overfill sensor when the power is off. When I did the tests it beeped for a few seconds while the sump was then resetting back to normal levels. After that it was back to normal operations.
My thought was that the overfill sensor was the issue, but I can't verify that. Also the only other thing is that a power bump can send bad current when it goes down or back up, so that might be why.
Any thoughts?
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Richard
Former 47G Column Reef, Magna
20" x 18" x 31"H
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Mark Peterson
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Posted: November 15 2013 at 10:56am |
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You are right. Electricity will actually jump in voltage/amperage before and/or after
it drops off. This can cause all kind of havoc and even damage on
electronic/electrical equipment.
A power outage at your house is actually a power outage for the entire subdivision or further, right!
Have you heard of power bumps and brownouts? The power being used by other equipment in the house, like a regrigerator, and other equipment in the neighborhood, like everyone else's refrigerators affects the way electrical power goes down and back on. To avoid damage, it's sometimes recommended to turn off electrical equipment before the power comes back on.
This is why I use KISS. I try to employ processes that are not tied to something that could interfere or go down.
Edited by Mark Peterson - November 15 2013 at 11:01am
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Reefkeeping Tips, & quick, easy setup tricks:www.utahreefs.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9244 Pay it forward - become a paid WMAS member 
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