No water evaporation?
 

Yesterday morning, my ato alarm went off saying the water level in the sump was too high. I left it as I had adjusted the gate valve as the water in my overflow was too high and figured the evaporation would deal with it and all would settle back down. My daughter unplugged it around 11 as it was still going off. I plugged it back in last night, still too high and this morning the water level hasn't changed. I usually go through 5 gls of water a day. Should I be worried, nothing appears to be abnormal.

Have you confirmed the tank temp lately ?

It stays around 80, right now 80.2 drops to about 79 at night.

Just wanted to make sure your temp hadn't suddenly bottomed out

What brand ATO is it ?
Do you manually re-fill the reservoir, or is it tapped into your RO ?
How new is the ATO and when's the last time you cleaned the sensor ?

Its a Tunze that I bought off another canreefer, he used it for 3 months, I've had it working since April this year. I manually top up the reservoir. No, I have not cleaned the sensor but in all honesty, its not the ATO. The water level in the sump has not dropped, neither has the level in the DT. The water level in the sump usually sits so that the water actually falls about an inch over the middle baffle, the level has been an inch higher than the baffle since yesterday, therefore no evaporation. The fresh water reservoir level has not changed either, so its not syphoning water into the sump, double checked the hose last night and today, its over 6 inches away from the top of the water. I still have to top up my 55 gl tank so I don't think my house conditions have changed. I checked to make sure my return pump is working, no issues there.

I was leaning towards a dirty sensor in conjunction with automatic RO re-filling

Well, I can't come up with anything for ya :question:

Curious to hear what you find though ...

Only other thing that comes to mind is, with all that extra water, wouldn't hurt to check your Sg

I'll have to check when I get home. I'll be doing a water change tonight so maybe something will show up then. :noidea: So weird to go through so much water daily, then nothing....

Only thing I can think of is this;
Some critter was on your sensor ( or it slipped on it's mount somehow ) and it overfilled the sump. The higher level in the sump is giving the return pump more to work with and it's filling your tank with more volume than normal, so the overflow is high
And now it's taking forever for the extra water to evaporate, or the new sensor position is keeping it full when you plug it back in until the float turns it off ?

Once you get your level back to previous, recheck your sensor level

Good luck

Yeah check your salinity to see if it changed, then this way you can tell if it was overfilled with freshwater.

Hmmm, I don't know if I have any critters in my sump....I haven't banished anyone (yet...have a wrasse that will be heading in there once I catch him...), but I'm sure something has fallen in...will look around. It was weird that my overflow was full, I noticed it as my emergency was running pretty fast. I have a sock on my main drain, I pulled it off last night, even though it wasn't full and changed it out, the overflow will back up a bit when the sock is full, but that wasn't it. And there were no critters in the sock. I've adjusted the sensor myself for less volume, the magnets are pretty strong. I guess something could have knocked the sensor, but the water should still be dropping off, the level has simply not changed. As a reference point, I looked at where the water was on the outside of my carbon/gfo reactor yesterday, same as today.

I'll have to confirm the sg and see where its at. That should be a good indicator of what is happening.

how big is your display tank? 5 gallons a day of evaporation seems considerably high.

180 gl display, 80 gl sump.

I had started a thread a while ago about how much evaporation was normal and this was consistant with others.

The amount of evaporation is related to your homes relative humidity, the lower your humidity the more evaporation you should expect. Perhaps when you were noticing 5 gallons it was cooler outside which means relative humidity will typically be lower in your home unless you're running a humidifier fairly aggressively. With the warmer weather lately and the amount of rain we're getting relative humidity is much higher now that a few months ago.

Is it possible that the higher water level in the sump is giving the illusion of less evaporation? Due to the greater surface area. You mentioned that it is now over your baffle so is it evaporating from the entire sump now instead of a single chamber? This would create the illusion of a lot less evaporation.

Over the winter, cooler months def more evaporation, and notice less when it's warmer. I just haven't seen a huge difference to date. That said, I plugged the ato back in, pump ran for 5 secs then stopped. Salinity is 1.026. Guess the evaporation has finally slowed down....guess it was just timing of this happening.

I agree with Sphelps that it's probably related to the humidity in your house. When it's cold and dry my evaporation is pretty significant. In the summer months, dramatically lower.

Well that's fine with me, lugging 5 gl jugs from the basement sucks :biggrin:

during summer, the humidity in the air gets so high that evaporation nearly stops sometimes. My tank can evaporate 2 gals per day, but right now it's around 1/2gal daily

Yes I remember Calgary winters being deadly dry... nose bleeds and the humidifier had to be refilled daily.

Is it all good now ?

It is, thank you. I just refilled the fw this morning, basically went through 5 gls this week instead of 5 gls in a day.

My house is so dry in the winter, when really cold, I have to fill morning and night. This is a nice break.