Tank Journal Archive

[Ziggy]

Yeay!!! The tank has had lots of presents today. I got the Kamoer dosing pump last Sunday (second hand but its only 1 year old and was only used for six months so virtually new)

and set it all up today. It was an easy set up once I read the instructions front to back three times and worked out what was what. With that said, it actually was quite easy. Auto doing now happening successfully and one less manual job for me to do :). Gotta be happy with that! It does need three new check valves which I picked up today at my LFS and will swap over sometime this week.

The next present for the tank today was a brand new Smart ATO. That was very easy to set up and seems to be running exactly as it should. I've used an old 60L tank that was once a freshwater tank I used to use so I'm interested to see how long that lasts me before it needs refilling.

Today's other tank present was a brand new Tunze Care Magnet. I had been using a Magfloat to clean the glass but it gave up the ghost this week. The padding on the external half broke away and the blade on the internal half bent so it was cactus really. The new Tunze cleaner seems to be a sensational piece of kit and I'm very happy with how it so gently, but thoroughly, cleans the glass.

I also bought two pieces of green star polyps today, two slightly different species. My plan is to glue one of the pieces to the defunct Magfloat and attach it to the back wall of the tank so that the polyps can grow up the back wall of the tank. I'm hoping this 'living' back wall will add an extra dimension of interest to the tank.

My final part of this update is the tweaking to the aquascape that I did on Sunday. I was frustrated with the scape design that had parallel straight, vertical lines of LR, one on each side of the central weir. It made the tank look too symmetrical in the middle I felt. So... more scape tweaking! I've been keeping a lovely piece of LR in the sump and I positioned that against the bommie on the right hand side of the weir, in an upside down L shape so that it comes out from the bommie half way up and then bends down in front of the central weir to reach the substrate. I then placed a Duncan coral on the bommie to the left of the weir so that it broke up the straight line edge of that part of the scape. I think I'm quite happy with the result of that tweaking. :)

 

[Sam Parker]

Did you time how long you let the ATO pump run for on initial power up? You'll find in 2 days it will start playing one of two songs depending on if you let it run too long or too short. Once you get to know how long you need to roughly run it for, it's an awesome unit :D

 

[Sam Parker]

Also - see how you go without the check valves, I don't run them and have no issues.

 

[Ziggy]

Did you time how long you let the ATO pump run for on initial power up? You'll find in 2 days it will start playing one of two songs depending on if you let it run too long or too short. Once you get to know how long you need to roughly run it for, it's an awesome unit :D

Sorry @Sam Parker I don't quite understand what you mean. On initialisation, the water level was almost already where it should be anyway. The ATO pump pushed a bit of water into the sump to bring it to level and its been feeding water into the sump correctly since then as the water level goes down.
The unit is automatic so theoretically the pump should only operate when the sump level drops below the sensor. So far so good. :)
Am I missing something though?

 

[MagicJ]

Also - see how you go without the check valves, I don't run them and have no issues.

Agree - my Kamoer has been running non stop and trouble free for 3+ years without check valves. Where do you have the Kamoer located relative to the water height in the sump?

 

[Sam Parker]

Sorry @Sam Parker I don't quite understand what you mean. On initialisation, the water level was almost already where it should be anyway. The ATO pump pushed a bit of water into the sump to bring it to level and its been feeding water into the sump correctly since then as the water level goes down.
The unit is automatic so theoretically the pump should only operate when the sump level drops below the sensor. So far so good. :)
Am I missing something though?

Hi Ziggy,

the smart ATO uses the amount of time the pump initially runs for when first powering up as a base setting. It uses that time as an indicator for under or over fill over the period of 24 or 48 hours. If it fills more than 5 times that much it will stop pumping and play a tune to indicate a problem (possible leak causing overfill) and if it does less than half of that much over 48 hours (I am not 100% sure on the calculations but will find some info on line for you.)

Sam

 

[Sam Parker]

On the bottom of page three of the manual they explain (about as complicated as they can make it LOL)
http://cdn.bulkreefsupply.com/media/wysiwyg/PDFs/smart_ato_maunal_en.pdf

 

[Ziggy]

Aha! Yes I understand now @Sam Parker , thanks. I'll keep a close eye on it. :)

The Kameor pump is located above both the the sump and the reservoir @MagicJ and the outward hose is clamped so that the end is fixed above the water line so there should be no problems. However, the pump came with three check valves (and I have since bought three new ones) so figured I was supposed to use them lol. :)

 

[Sam Parker]

In a perfect world the check valves are not needed with peristaltic pumps, but these are tiny little pumps that are built on the cheap, so see how you go. I had more trouble with them than without them as they would clog up too often.

 

[MagicJ]

They might be OK with water, but we are pushing saturated solutions through them so it is not hard to imagine that they will clog up fairly quickly. They way you have it set up (which is the same as me) should mean that the check valves won't be required.

 

[Ziggy]

Hi Ziggy,

the smart ATO uses the amount of time the pump initially runs for when first powering up as a base setting. It uses that time as an indicator for under or over fill over the period of 24 or 48 hours. If it fills more than 5 times that much it will stop pumping and play a tune to indicate a problem (possible leak causing overfill) and if it does less than half of that much over 48 hours (I am not 100% sure on the calculations but will find some info on line for you.)

Sam

@Sam Parker , I need some help please with this ATO. I've run it for a week now and just as you said after 3 days it beeps. Its done it twice now. Red light and beeping. The first time, I had no idea what to do (the instructions say what the light and beep is for but not what to do about it) so I reset the whole thing and positioned the sensor exactly where the fill line should be. Same thing happened 3 days later.

You mentioned I needed to time the initial fill when plugging it in. Yep, will do that but what do I do when it beeps at me three days later please? Getting frustrated now! :)

 

[Sam Parker]

haha I knew the "issue" would surface soon enough ;)

OK, I'll do my best to explain it. When you first power on the unit, it saves the amount of time it initially runs for (as in how long you let it top off for when you first connect power). The smarts in the unit then time how long it spends topping off over a set period of time (I'd say it is 72 hours if you are getting the error after three days). It then does some calculations with these times to work out if your tank is under or over filling and if it thinks it is, it will beep and flash and stop topping off.

Perhaps this video will help:

Or perhaps this post from the distributor:
http://thereefuge.com/threads/smart...-up-your-smart-ato-let-the-unit-run-th.10880/

Or check out my journey to learning out how these units worked here:
http://thereefuge.com/threads/smart-ato-review.9066/page-2

So in closing, when you first power it up:

 

[Ziggy]

Superb @Sam Parker ! Thanks so much, I've read all that, watched all those videos, makes more sense now, thanks heaps!