I love your future self and what does it think of the Red Sea Reefer ATO, or is the future self still in the present?
Future, future, future, future self here! The ATO is a lot of hype and not a lot of delivering. They advertise;
-Temperature monitoring
-Reservoir monitoring
-Leak sensor monitoring
-Silent operation
-Wifi monitoring
The manual that comes with the unit can be tossed into the burn pile as it does not help you with the app at all and let's be honest, this unit is worthless without the app. Temperature monitoring is bad. The reason being, to save space and manufacturing costs they stuck it inside the water level control unit which sets it very high in the sump so of course it reads much lower than the actual temp of the tank. You can calibrate this to another controller or thermometer but it will fluctuate since your top off is usually in that part of the sump as well, but maybe red sea tanks are different? The best way to do this would be to have a temp probe separate. This would solve the issue, but Red Sea is squeezing all the cash they can from this product.
Leak sensor is separate and I put it behind the sump so if I did have a leak it will make a noise. Does it work, who knows?
Reservoir monitoring is wrong most of the time but gives you sort of a snapshot of when you need to refill. To be accurate it depends on your fill tube length, height, and distance from sump. I eyeballed it so my monitor is off 1.6 gallons give or take. If it says 2 gallons left, it's empty. Strangely the water used is accurate, but only takes what you use in a day. If I add up two days worth it's almost exactly what is left in the reservoir. That is super weird to me but whatever. I think maybe a programmer could use that amount and make a better monitor. I dunno I just use made in china apps I don't make them.
It's is not silent. It sounds like a cow p*ssing on a rock. The first two days I had it people in the house would come running to see what was pouring on the floor. Now everyone ignores it but there is no question the tank is filling and it runs just long enough to make me wonder if it is going to stop of dump the whole container in.
What does work well, wifi monitoring. If red sea can do it so should ecotech, just saying. It works all the time, app is easy to navigate, but the manual leaves out the little fun tweaks you can do. So I should have spent more time snooping around and less time reading their glossy, 10 page Multilanguage full colored manual. Hey Red Sea separate temp probe, lose the pretty box and manual.
Red Sea lets the level get very very low in sump then dumps gallons at a time. Where as the Tunze does smaller amounts throughout the day which in my opinion keeps it much much more accurate water level. This might not matter to some. But for me a 1.7 gallon trigger zone is large.
This unit can not be used for freshwater. Sorry planted tank people.
Overall it's a good buy, but most of the monitoring at this point is gimmick. I am going to be honest, I had a perfectly good Tunze. It's a better ATO by miles, but it does only the one thing. The Red Sea has these other gimmickey things, that makes it a bit more fun. And they can always roll out updates to fix certain things. The red sea is much better looking unit too. If that matters to people.
If you have a Tunze and it works keep it. If you are starting a new tank then consider the red sea but understand if you are concerned with longevity, accuracy, and operation Tunze is the much better unit.
