PorterK
Community Member
Hey everyone! This weekend I took the liberty of building an auto top off for my reef aquarium. Manually adding water each day was too time consuming and overall bad for the health of my system (swings in salinity). Thankfully I had been slowly raising my salinity over the past few weeks from 1.021 a few weeks ago to 1.025 today (big win!).
First of all, this is a budget build. I've already spent thousands of dollars just getting my tank to this point... I find it harder and harder to justify spending even more money each time I want to make my tank more stable. Trying to find that balance. (My significant other thought we were done spending money on this months ago haha)
To start things off, here's a parts list and total cost. This is cost from not owning any of these pieces to building it. If you are a reefer in the hobby you likely have more than a few of these items just laying around:
Water Container, 20g Brute Tote ($23)
1/4" Tubing ($7 for 50')
1/4" Quick Connect Ball Valve ($7 for 5)
1/4" Quick Connect to 1/4" Male MIP ($2.50)
1/4" Quick Connect to 1/4" Female ($2.79)
Plumbers Tape ($5 for 5)
100% Silicone ($4.50)
Float Valve with HOB Mount ($14)
5 Gallon Bucket x2 ($6)
Total Cost of Supplies: $71.79
Price of Project: $52.54
The price of project assumes that 10' of tubing will be used.
Tools Required:
Drill
1/2" Drill Bit (Spade works best IMO)
Caulk Gun (depending on which silicone you got)
Build Time: 1 - 2 hrs working, 24+ hours total.
The build:
No, it was not a typo. We aren't using a pump for this build. Pumps are too expensive and fail quickly. Plus we would have to invest in a smarter float switch and potentially wire some stuff up. This is not outside of my comfort zone, but it seems very complicated. Why use a pump to move water when we have gravity
Step 1: Drill the whole in our water container. You want this to be as close to the bottom of the container as you can get without actually hitting the bottom of the container. Also keep in mind you have to insert the quick connect too. I'd say a good inch from the bottom of the container is a good spot to drill.
Step 2: Waterproof our quick connect. We've just drilled a hole into a water tight container, we want to be able to sleep tight knowing that we haven't created a spot where a leak can occur. Here we just silicone the inside of the container around our fitting.
Sloppy but it'll do. Next we want to put plumbers tape on the outside threads of our fitting
Step 3: Wait for the silicone to dry. My silicone says it will dry within 30 minutes, but we will wait a full 24 hrs before we expose this to any water.
Step 4: Attach the female fitting and test for leaks.
Step 5: Figure out where you are going to put this thing. There are a few requirements for this:
Step 6: Drill any holes if necessary.
This ATO is in the closet of a neighboring room for me, so I had to drill a 1/4" hole in the wall for the water line to go through. This is a very small hole and usually isn't a problem for landlords. Easily patched up if need be. For me I used some cable pins to pin the tubing to the wall
Step 7: Install the float valve in your sump at the desired water level. This is a good time to cut the tubing to a manageable length as well. We don't really want/need a lot of slack here.
Step 8: Add the ball valve to your tubing where you think the container will go.
This is important to do before you add water to the container. If you ever have to take this thing apart, you to do not want to do it while there is still a full stream of water coming from it.
Step 9: Prepare your buckets
For this step I am just using some random plant cutters to cut the handles off of my buckets. This is because the closet is relatively small and every few inches counts here.
The best way I've found to do this is to cut in a V shape where the end of the V hits the hole made for the handle.
Step 9: Add water, and flip the ball valve to open. Enjoy your auto top off!
Thanks everyone for reading! I hope this was useful. For me I didn't have a lot of room in the office where the reef tank is located and I was willing to sacrifice a small hole in the wall in order to have an ATO! (No space under the stand either!)
I was contemplating shelling out over $100 for one of these systems, but at the end of the day it only costed me about $35 (the container + the float valve) to build this considering all of the other parts I had laying around from past DIY projects. Hope it helps someone who is looking to save a little $$.
Even if you don't have room for the full setup, I do recommend finding a way to do this without a pump if you are trying to save a little cash. Gravity hasn't been monetized by the government yet so we only have to pay Free.99 for the continuous operation of the system itself! Plus, you don't have a pump to worry about replacing
Any comments are gladly accepted!
First of all, this is a budget build. I've already spent thousands of dollars just getting my tank to this point... I find it harder and harder to justify spending even more money each time I want to make my tank more stable. Trying to find that balance. (My significant other thought we were done spending money on this months ago haha)
To start things off, here's a parts list and total cost. This is cost from not owning any of these pieces to building it. If you are a reefer in the hobby you likely have more than a few of these items just laying around:
Water Container, 20g Brute Tote ($23)
1/4" Tubing ($7 for 50')
1/4" Quick Connect Ball Valve ($7 for 5)
1/4" Quick Connect to 1/4" Male MIP ($2.50)
1/4" Quick Connect to 1/4" Female ($2.79)
Plumbers Tape ($5 for 5)
100% Silicone ($4.50)
Float Valve with HOB Mount ($14)
5 Gallon Bucket x2 ($6)
Total Cost of Supplies: $71.79
Price of Project: $52.54
The price of project assumes that 10' of tubing will be used.
Tools Required:
Drill
1/2" Drill Bit (Spade works best IMO)
Caulk Gun (depending on which silicone you got)
Build Time: 1 - 2 hrs working, 24+ hours total.
The build:
No, it was not a typo. We aren't using a pump for this build. Pumps are too expensive and fail quickly. Plus we would have to invest in a smarter float switch and potentially wire some stuff up. This is not outside of my comfort zone, but it seems very complicated. Why use a pump to move water when we have gravity
Step 1: Drill the whole in our water container. You want this to be as close to the bottom of the container as you can get without actually hitting the bottom of the container. Also keep in mind you have to insert the quick connect too. I'd say a good inch from the bottom of the container is a good spot to drill.
Step 2: Waterproof our quick connect. We've just drilled a hole into a water tight container, we want to be able to sleep tight knowing that we haven't created a spot where a leak can occur. Here we just silicone the inside of the container around our fitting.
Sloppy but it'll do. Next we want to put plumbers tape on the outside threads of our fitting
Step 3: Wait for the silicone to dry. My silicone says it will dry within 30 minutes, but we will wait a full 24 hrs before we expose this to any water.
Step 4: Attach the female fitting and test for leaks.
Step 5: Figure out where you are going to put this thing. There are a few requirements for this:
- The fitting must be ABOVE the desired water level in the sump
- The water line must trend downwards
Step 6: Drill any holes if necessary.
This ATO is in the closet of a neighboring room for me, so I had to drill a 1/4" hole in the wall for the water line to go through. This is a very small hole and usually isn't a problem for landlords. Easily patched up if need be. For me I used some cable pins to pin the tubing to the wall
Step 7: Install the float valve in your sump at the desired water level. This is a good time to cut the tubing to a manageable length as well. We don't really want/need a lot of slack here.
Step 8: Add the ball valve to your tubing where you think the container will go.
This is important to do before you add water to the container. If you ever have to take this thing apart, you to do not want to do it while there is still a full stream of water coming from it.
Step 9: Prepare your buckets
For this step I am just using some random plant cutters to cut the handles off of my buckets. This is because the closet is relatively small and every few inches counts here.
The best way I've found to do this is to cut in a V shape where the end of the V hits the hole made for the handle.
Step 9: Add water, and flip the ball valve to open. Enjoy your auto top off!
Thanks everyone for reading! I hope this was useful. For me I didn't have a lot of room in the office where the reef tank is located and I was willing to sacrifice a small hole in the wall in order to have an ATO! (No space under the stand either!)
I was contemplating shelling out over $100 for one of these systems, but at the end of the day it only costed me about $35 (the container + the float valve) to build this considering all of the other parts I had laying around from past DIY projects. Hope it helps someone who is looking to save a little $$.
Even if you don't have room for the full setup, I do recommend finding a way to do this without a pump if you are trying to save a little cash. Gravity hasn't been monetized by the government yet so we only have to pay Free.99 for the continuous operation of the system itself! Plus, you don't have a pump to worry about replacing
Any comments are gladly accepted!
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