No water evaporation?

[Coralgurl]

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.

[gregzz4]

Have you confirmed the tank temp lately ?

[Coralgurl]

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

[gregzz4]

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 ?

[Coralgurl]

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.

[gregzz4]

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

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

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

[burgerchow]

Originally Posted by Coralgurl

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.

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

[Coralgurl]

Originally Posted by burgerchow

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.

[sphelps]

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.

[Gizmoh]

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.