Help! ATO reserve dumped all water into the sump on my reefer!

MCooper

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Hopefully someone can help me. Woke up and checked my sump like I do every morning and the 5 gallon ATO reserve was completely empty (filled it up 12 hours ago). Something malfunctioned on the Reefer ATO so hopefully someone can help me figure it out!
 

ReeferMadness80G

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Oh no! Check the salinity of your tank and base your water change size off of that. I don't want to give you the incorrect information so I'll just give the #reefsquad a wake up bump! Good luck
 

Jason mack

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Hopefully someone can help me. Woke up and checked my sump like I do every morning and the 5 gallon ATO reserve was completely empty (filled it up 12 hours ago). Something malfunctioned on the Reefer ATO so hopefully someone can help me figure it out!
Well I guess first you need too check your salinity of your tank and correct that by taking water out and adding new salt mixed water till it's right again ..then try and figure out what's happened too your ato
 

Antics

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I would imagine the issue lies in the float valve as that's the only component of the Reefer top off system. Make sure it is properly opening and closing.
 

redfishbluefish

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Need to determine current salinity.

Now here's the good news.......you can drop salinity very fast with no impact to the inhabitants (with exception of some inverts). But now you're going to have to raise it slowly over a couple days.
 

Diesel

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Dang!
Sorry that this happened overnight.
Plenty of info already given.
When do a water change make sure the new water is a higher level salt kinda like 0.028 or so.
Corals can survive in a lower condition salt but long term it ain't a good thing.
 

saltyfilmfolks

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Need to determine current salinity.

Now here's the good news.......you can drop salinity very fast with no impact to the inhabitants (with exception of some inverts). But now you're going to have to raise it slowly over a couple days.

Dang!
Sorry that this happened overnight.
Plenty of info already given.
When do a water change make sure the new water is a higher level salt kinda like 0.028 or so.
Corals can survive in a lower condition salt but long term it ain't a good thing.
Yup. +1. Its not a huge deal, just take your time putting it back.
 

wpeterson

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Ugh, sorry to hear about this. What damage there is has been done, so there are two important things you can do now:

1) Don't over-react! Raising the salinity back up quickly or making other changes may do even more harm.
2) Figure out how your ATO failed and fix the root cause. Was there a siphon? Usually 99% of ATO over-flows are from a siphon.

If I were you, I would wait for evaporation to slowly raise the salinity back to normal. You can also slowly raise it up yourself, but in my house water evaporates rapidly this time of year.
 

Branespikin

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Like @cromag08 said ditch that ATO. That was first thing i did. Your float must have got stuck. I personally have Tunze ATO and its spot on plus has an alarm if emergency float is activated. Saved me twice already when my return went haywire.
 

Dancingmad

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Maybe a clip on fan to encourage evaporation - but only if you have a reliable heater b/c it may drop the temp: Wouldn't want to add another swing into the mix. Hope it all works out alright.
 
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