I am looking at a total loss...Learn from my mistake

[Dearth]

I had an ato failure a few years ago no where near as catastrophic as yours but I pumped 20 gallons of ato water into my sump which filled up fast and dumped about 15 gallons onto the floor hours of steam cleaning carpet and doing a water change and making fresh water killed a good portion of my day.

I lived alone for years and I was gone like you for 12 hrs a day and nights (shift worker) so never knew what I would be coming home too every night or morning

Still sucks though

[Piscez]

Gary so sorry to hear, and yes it should help as a reminder to us all, as these type of things happen more and more often we owe it to our little creatures to be diligent and responsible for their lives, I've certainly messed up a couple of times and I totally agree redundancy is a major preventative. Good luck in your rebuild.

[Potatohead]

I don't mean to pile on, but most ATO's also have a maximum run time so this type of thing doesn't happen. If set up correctly the most water a system will lose is whatever amount is in the return chamber + maximum ATO run time. You'll burn up your return pump, but who cares. I guess if the leak is slow enough that the ATO can refill completely and resets every time, there's nothing you can do about that. In hindsight this stuff if always easily solved of course.

Really a crummy situation for you . I hope some stuff pulls through.

[Cujo#31]

Originally Posted by Potatohead

I don't mean to pile on, but most ATO's also have a maximum run time so this type of thing doesn't happen. If set up correctly the most water a system will lose is whatever amount is in the return chamber + maximum ATO run time. You'll burn up your return pump, but who cares. I guess if the leak is slow enough that the ATO can refill completely and resets every time, there's nothing you can do about that. In hindsight this stuff if always easily solved of course.

Really a crummy situation for you . I hope some stuff pulls through.

Oh no. Pile it on bud. This isn't about a pity party for me, this is about sharing and learning. I had asked myself that question too and the simple answer is my reactor is fed with a 1/4" line that is throttled down to keep a decent feed to reactor. I've seen my ATO trigger for top off and it only runs for about 5 seconds. There is plenty of time for the pump to shut down and reset before the levels dropped low enough again to trigger start up.

[DKoKoMan]

Sorry to hear man about the disaster. I feel for you as I also work shiftwork and this is an example of my biggest fear. I always worry that when I get home from my regular 10 hours (sometimes 12/13 hrs) that something has gone wrong. I have saw some of your frags on Canreef and they are stunning. I am also very impressed with your resiliency and your will to rebuild a new system. I’m hopefully some people who have acquired beautiful pieces from you are able to help you rebuild your coral collection as Myka has already mentioned. Keep us posted... I appreciate you sharing your tragic experience with us Canreefers so we can learn and hopefully prevent this in the future.

[Animal-Chin]

Oh man this sucks, sorry to hear...ooooof

[Cujo#31]

In the spirit of redundancy and planning, and going over some of the things I could have done differently, if I had set up a salinity probe to my controller, then run the ATO thru the controller, I could have most likely set the ATO "off" at a specific SG reading and most likely could have avoided the whole event. I would still have water on the floor and possibly a burnt out return pump but those are small potato issues in comparison to what I have now.

[Cujo#31]

Originally Posted by DKoKoMan

Sorry to hear man about the disaster. I feel for you as I also work shiftwork and this is an example of my biggest fear. I always worry that when I get home from my regular 10 hours (sometimes 12/13 hrs) that something has gone wrong. I have saw some of your frags on Canreef and they are stunning. I am also very impressed with your resiliency and your will to rebuild a new system. I’m hopefully some people who have acquired beautiful pieces from you are able to help you rebuild your coral collection as Myka has already mentioned. Keep us posted... I appreciate you sharing your tragic experience with us Canreefers so we can learn and hopefully prevent this in the future.

Yes, this has been a kick to the nuts for sure, but I'm still moving forward. I have a nice new display, a newly designed and re-tooled sump. and a plan. This is a major setback for sure, and I wont bounce back very quickly but I can only move forward and do so successfully if I learn from my failures.....which are quite numerous LMMFAO