Best bang for Ur buck ATO

[jason604]

Hey guys I'm getting tired of pouring a bucket of RO water into my sump each day. What's the best bang for your buck ATO method? I store RO water into my 5g water dispensing drinking bottle. Aqua lifter and something? I dunno what u guys do that is fail proof =)

[freeze]

If you want fail proof, tunze. Its about $200 bucks, and has all the bells so you don't flood your house. If it runs longer then 5 minutes it shuts off. Uses an optical sensor and then has a fload sensor backup so that if the water reaches the upper float in your sump, or tank, it shuts off. Best bang for your buck in my world as its 200 up front, but you shouldn't flood the place.

[spit.fire]

IMO jbj is the best, I've seen a lot of the tunze atos stop working

[Spyd]

I would say Elos or Tunze. I have had my Elos for 2 years now and it works flawlessly. Either one will run you about $200 but they keep your water level darn near perfect which also optimizes your skimmer production.

[wickedfrags]

auto shut of valve/solenoid and a float valve from Kent worked well for me for over 10 years

[Reef Pilot]

Originally Posted by wickedfrags

auto shut of valve/solenoid and a float valve from Kent worked well for me for over 10 years

+1. Best bang for the buck, for sure. I have a rodi line plumbed directly to my tank using this. Completely fail safe and trouble free.

[cav~firez22]

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

+1. Best bang for the buck, for sure. I have a rodi line plumbed directly to my tank using this. Completely fail safe and trouble free.

same here. Ro line plumbed direct to sump, on a float switch. never had a failure yet.

[corpusse]

The new Hydro one seems pretty good so far and is cheaper then most other options mentioned but you have to supply the pump but likely have a maxijet or similar lying around.

I like that the controller is water proof or at least water resistant. I spilled water on my tunze controller once years ago and that was it. It is probably still the best in that you take a few ml out and it comes on. The hydro one there needs to be a very slight drop in water level but more significant. Not enough to effect salinity but I don't think its coming on anywhere near as much as a tunze or jbj.

The JBJ seems pretty good too, I also use one of these on my pico. I recently had a sensor die for no apparent reason but it was going for several years and since I only use one I simply swapped it for the other one and its back to working great.

Really any option is better then manual.

[mike31154]

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

+1. Best bang for the buck, for sure. I have a rodi line plumbed directly to my tank using this. Completely fail safe and trouble free.

So your RODI runs for short bursts to top off your system? Usually not a good idea due to TDS creep. RO systems work most efficiently when used in longer runs, not short 5 minute bursts. I know you guys on the coast have pretty low source TDS, so might not be an issue. I would never do that here with a source TDS in the range of 180. It takes a good 3 to 5 minutes to get the the RO output TDS down to 1 from 20 or more on initial start up. And if I ran that 20 TDS on start up through my DI stage with multiple short on/off cycles on a continuing basis, it wouldn't take long to exhaust the media. Without the DI stage I'd be adding unwanted TDS to my tank in pretty short order.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

+1. Best bang for the buck, for sure. I have a rodi line plumbed directly to my tank using this. Completely fail safe and trouble free.

Can I +2 this? Same here, works great.