OP
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hawkinsrgk
Valuable Member
How does Sun around 2:00 sound? Any time is good with me I just need to be home around 4:15.
Need Help with autotopoff
- Thread starter hawkinsrgk
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How does Sun around 2:00 sound? Any time is good with me I just need to be home around 4:15.
Chameleon
Valuable Member
Sounds good. See you then.
-Tyler
PedroYoung
Valuable Member
I have a kalk stirrer (aqua medic) I am not using if you want to borrow it. Only ran it about a week, then went back to 2 part dosing cause my pH runs high.
OP
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hawkinsrgk
Valuable Member
Thanks. Will give you a call Sunday to make sure everything is still good.
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hawkinsrgk
Valuable Member
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hawkinsrgk
Valuable Member
Well I did my first dose of adding Kalk to the topoff and made my first mistake in the process.
Thursday is generally water change day for me. So I did my water change, added Kalk to the topoff, tested water and turned on the RO to fill the topoff, 32 gallon brute and 44 gallon brute. Then I went to bed. This morning when I got up to turn the RO off I noticed the water in the sump was up to the top of the float switch.
Checked the float switch, it wasn't stuck and then I noticed what had happened and the series of steps that I took to cause this to happen.
1. When I was setting this up I bought rigid line tubing from Aquarium Imports. While I was there I asked Steve if the tubing was 1/4 of an inch. He said yes it is. It was actually 3/16. So to work around this I took flexible tubing and put it over the top of the rigid tubing. By doing this I was able to connect a 1/4 elbow to the rigid tubing.
2. The topoff barrel was totally full and I connected the aqualifter pump to it to test. It worked but was very loud and didn't seem to make nowhere near 3.5 gallons an hour.
3. I thought that most likely the reason it was loud and wasn't able to pump much water must be the 3/16 hard line tubing. So I replaced the intake with some left over RO/DI tubing.
4. This worked great, no more noise, it pumped the water like it was suppose to, etc.
5. What I didn't take into consideration was that by switching to the RO/DI tubing I now removed all of the air that was in the output of the aqualifter pump. When the RO barrel was completely full it caused a siphon to the sump.
So I made a siphon break out of a T fitting this morning, tested it and all was good. The good thing about all of this was that I didn't put that much Kalk in the topoff. Had I been working with a full dose things would have been much worse.
Thursday is generally water change day for me. So I did my water change, added Kalk to the topoff, tested water and turned on the RO to fill the topoff, 32 gallon brute and 44 gallon brute. Then I went to bed. This morning when I got up to turn the RO off I noticed the water in the sump was up to the top of the float switch.
Checked the float switch, it wasn't stuck and then I noticed what had happened and the series of steps that I took to cause this to happen.
1. When I was setting this up I bought rigid line tubing from Aquarium Imports. While I was there I asked Steve if the tubing was 1/4 of an inch. He said yes it is. It was actually 3/16. So to work around this I took flexible tubing and put it over the top of the rigid tubing. By doing this I was able to connect a 1/4 elbow to the rigid tubing.
2. The topoff barrel was totally full and I connected the aqualifter pump to it to test. It worked but was very loud and didn't seem to make nowhere near 3.5 gallons an hour.
3. I thought that most likely the reason it was loud and wasn't able to pump much water must be the 3/16 hard line tubing. So I replaced the intake with some left over RO/DI tubing.
4. This worked great, no more noise, it pumped the water like it was suppose to, etc.
5. What I didn't take into consideration was that by switching to the RO/DI tubing I now removed all of the air that was in the output of the aqualifter pump. When the RO barrel was completely full it caused a siphon to the sump.
So I made a siphon break out of a T fitting this morning, tested it and all was good. The good thing about all of this was that I didn't put that much Kalk in the topoff. Had I been working with a full dose things would have been much worse.
Chameleon
Valuable Member
Ouch. Good thing it wasnt worse then it was. Some people use half inch pvc as water slides so they can put the output of the ato high up and let it slide down the inside of the pvc to break the siphon. Your T siphon break is a much better way though. In my case I just have my sump raised higher than the ATO container, but being a basement sump makes my options more diverse.
