My boneheaded catastrophe...

[ca1ore]

Yeah, that's an OOOops ..... Does seem that as helpful as it is, the ATO is the most common cause of tank'sasters. Been there ..... twice. Including one time when I believed it impossible for my ATO to misbehave. Unfortunately I had failed to take into account reefer (that's me) stupidity ......

 

[andyg1960]

Best of luck. I think things will recover.

 

[Brad Miller]

I feel your pain brother !
5 days ago, I left my ro/di line running to top off my display tank sump (takes 3-5 minutes) and was distracted, then went to bed.....thank god my wife woke me up 4 hours later when she went to the bathroom and walked across the carpet !

My salinity in the tank was 1.018 and I quickly used a calculator and figured out how much salt it would take to put my tank back to 1.024 where I keep it.
I mixed 6 lbs of reef crystals up in a 5 gallon ro/di bucket, arerated with pump for 10 minutes and then drained 5 gallons out of tank and dumped my mix in.

No signs of any losses as of yet.....believing I dodged a bullet this time, the next morning I ordered a Neptune ATK and reservoir to use with my Apex controller....now I just need to fill the resivoir by hand like your doing....don't think I'll automated this part.

Nice to know I'm not the only one

 

[Exotic Aquaria]

I've fallen asleep topping off as well (ok so ive done it a couple times) so don't feel bad, just slowly bring the salinity back up and you should be ok.

 

[Philt56]

One thing that might help in the future. The tunze ATO has an overflow alarm. It has a float valve that causes an audible alarm if the sump water level goes too high. Not sure if it woul wake you but something to consider. I’m guessing there are other similar overflow alarms.

 

[PiscesPower]

Mine was last Monday... I came downstairs to the sucking sounds of my return pump. When I walked over to check it out my feet were soaked. Thankfully had my phone in my hand and turned everything off with the Apex. I, in trying to squish everything into my sump, had put a nano reactor in my skimmer chamber, kind of balancing them together. Skimmer tipped a slight bit, but just enough to overflow and then empty the ATO reservior and then the return chamber. Thankfully, I had emptied the skimmer the night before and my ATO vessel only had about 4 gallons in it, my salinity only dropped a small amount, but my alk took a tumble and I lost a chalice that has not been looking great. Also in a rental, hope the hardwoods flatten out again before the lease is up next year. I kept saying I was going to buy the LDK module but kept spending the money on the pretty things...I did order it that day.

After all that, I feel your pain, and often wonder how I managed to keep 2 children alive to adulthood with all the bone-headed mistakes I have made with my tank.

 

[4FordFamily]

It looks like we aren’t alone! We all make mistakes haha!

 

[n2585722]

This may seem like a crazy Idea but can you drill the ATO chamber of your sump to the outside of the sump. If this happens again it will not spill over into the rest of the sump but outside the sump. That would not help with the wet floor but it may keep the salinity in the tank from dropping. I think I remember seeing a RODI shutoff that operated on a leak detector somewhere. That might be something to look into. I had something similar happen with my old setup in the 90's. Luckily the overfull ATO container just overflowed onto the floor and not into the tank water. Hope you get things back to normal with a minimal amount of loss.

 

[Tabasco1]

My RODI is not directly connected to my ATO, so no danger of tank catastrophe, but I can't count how many times I've overflowed the ATO container, which leaks into a lock off we have in our home.

I now set the oven timer any time the RODI is turned on. And I mean ANY TIME THE RODI is turned on. I've also thought.. oh... I only have time to run for 30 min, I'll for sure remember. Nope. Alarm is non-negotiable now when making RODI. It has saved me soooo many times.

 

[vetteguy53081]

All parts of the joy of rearing marine specimens.
I would get two containers and pumps and pump in, on a very slow flow, 1.026 into sump ,and pump out tank water at equal flow periodically to slowly raise salinity. You are at Hypo-salinity but have little time to get water to normal level.
Sorry to hear and best of luck with this

 

[Ctg0209]

Also, thanks for the concern over the apartment. Thankfully I'm on the ground floor and on a slab, so nothing to damage but the carpet...which should have been replaced already anyway.

I did the same thing a couple months ago. Fortunately for me it wasn’t flowing directly into my tank however it was just flowing right onto the hardwood floor. I also have a ground floor apartment and it soaked the carpet in the hallway and warped and discolored the hardwood floor. My wife was none too happy but I was able to fix it. Lesson learned and now Every time I turn on the RODI she nags me not to overflow it again.

 

[kass03]

I add water daily manually. I forget all the time when I'm filling the jugs lol and have pretty much ruined my laminate floor in my kitchen.
I do have 3 google homes and when I'm smart I tell google to tell me when 3 minutes is up so I don't forget.

 

[Mattres]

Sorry to hear mate! Hope you can cut the losses as much as possible.
I used to use the same method of topping up the ATO and had similar mistakes but never a full overflow of the sump like you unfortunately had.
When you start thinking about the ATO again I’d recommend a simple garden tap timer upstream on the RO/DI feed water. I reckon it’s saved me a lot of mistakes and once you know how long it takes to fill your ATO you can set it to the same time every time and not have to worry about it overflowing.

 

[saltyhog]

My RO/DI reservoir is separate from my ATO reservoir which I fill it manually....but I have a simple float valve in the RO/DI reservoir and it has never failed. With it being in pure RO/DI there are no critters or salt mix or proteinaceous material to clog it or make it fail. Mine has been in service 6 years with no problems. While it could fail it would more likely prevent this from happening again. Just a thought!

 

[n2585722]

Like saltyhog I have a float valve on my RODI feed to my DI tank and one on my mix tank feed. There is also a controller controlled solenoid on each. The float valve is just a backup in the event the controller does not turn off the flow. I also have leak detectors on the floor near the storage tanks that should turn off all the solenoid valves including one that is on the RODI feed.

 

[Gahngoo]

Ive done bonehead stuff too & dealt with other issues.

After flooding my floor by forgetting to turn off the RO/DI after filling the ATO reservoir, I started using a timer outlet. Set it for 90 minutes...done.

Forgot to turn my ATO back on after a water change...right before I went out of town for the week. Salinity went through the roof and pump started sucking air. No losses. I got lucky.

Latest was a heater that failed "ON" getting temps to 96 degrees. It was like that for a few hours. I rolled the dice and quickly dropped the temp with Ziploc bags filled with ice. Saved everything but a blood shrimp. Corals (LPS colonies) were angry for a week.

It happens. Just roll with the punches.

 

[Cabinetman]

I’ve done so many bonehead things to flood around the tank that my wife hardly bats an eye now. One simple cheap thing that has woke me up a few times to water on the floor is my smoke/water detector thing I geared up. There’s lots of info on how to turn a cheap $10 smoke detector into a water alarm on the internet but basically you just solder 2 wires onto the circuit board of the detector and run them to the floor and if water bridges the gap between the 2 leads it sets off the smoke detector. It in no way takes the ability away from the smoke detector to detect smoke either. One of the best rigs I geared up that helps me sleep at night with all the water I got flowing in the basement. I also have a few failsafe programs on my apex but the smoke detector rig is the best and loudest lol

 

[Brew12]

I’ve done so many bonehead things to flood around the tank that my wife hardly bats an eye now. One simple cheap thing that has woke me up a few times to water on the floor is my smoke/water detector thing I geared up. There’s lots of info on how to turn a cheap $10 smoke detector into a water alarm on the internet but basically you just solder 2 wires onto the circuit board of the detector and run them to the floor and if water bridges the gap between the 2 leads it sets off the smoke detector. It in no way takes the ability away from the smoke detector to detect smoke either. One of the best rigs I geared up that helps me sleep at night with all the water I got flowing in the basement. I also have a few failsafe programs on my apex but the smoke detector rig is the best and loudest lol

That is a brilliant idea! I love it!

 

[mta_morrow]

My wife works for State Farm. They give away alarms for flooding. You just lay it on the floor wherever you want and if the slightest amount of water is detected the ear piercing alarm goes off.

I have one right behind my tank.

I will get a pic and try to get a little video tonight if anyone is interested.

 

[HotRocks]

My wife works for State Farm. They give away alarms for flooding. You just lay it on the floor wherever you want and if the slightest amount of water is detected the ear piercing alarm goes off.

I have one right behind my tank.

I will get a pic and try to get a little video tonight if anyone is interested.

I use something similar. Mine is also wifi connected and sends an email alert as well so if you are away you still get notified.