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what failed?


solor

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Come home from work and go straight to check on my tank like always. Hear my controller in alarm (high water).Immediately check sump and sure enough my ATO had pumped in 10 gallons of RODI water. Salinity dropped to 1.022, not horrible, but, not good. Usually keep it at 1.025.

 

Question is - did my RKE or my SL1 fail? RKE said error and SL1 status light was blinking like crazy. Thing of it is I have 2 switches for redundancy to auto shut off ATO pump. Alarm was triggered, both switches showed in correct position on head unit after a quick reboot, ATO should of shut off.

 

I think I should of bought an apex...

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I had a similar instance just a month ago and it was the switches themselves that went bad. My Apex showed the switches in the correct position but the switches were burnt out. Not saying that is your problem but dont rule them out. You can check continuity with a cheap ohm tester, touch a lead to each wire and if it reads 0 they are bad. If the needle or display shows anymovement they should be good.

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I try to have important things on dedicated equipment. So ato- have it on a purpose built ato. Heaters, purpose built ranco heater controller. I use the reefkeeper to control lights, powerheads, and monitor temps and Ph, then warn me if there are issues with anything. If it fails, only "bad" thing that could happen is my light not turn on. Oh well. Haha.

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Not sure about your controller, but with the Apex, you can program the ATO to shut off if it pumps more that a certain volume in a given time frame. This provides a backup to the backup. The first backup is having a second, upper switch to shut the thing off if the bottom switch fails.

 

There are two types of float switch: "normally open" and "normally closed." Actually, there are reversible float switches that allow you to flip the float and run it either way. Make sure that when the float valve fails, it defaults to shutting off the ATO rather than defaulting to keeping it on. (ask me how i learned this :-))

 

Also, you can buy replacement floats for cheap - $7-8. http://www.chicagosensor.com/Vertical-Mount_Float_Switches.html. You might want to replace them every year as part of a maintenance cycle. You can cycle the upper float to the lower position and throw out the lower one.

 

These floats fail when water creeps into the switch mechanism. This happens much faster if your float switch is frequently submerged (such as when you turn off your return pump and water siphons back into the sump).

 

Finally, you can seal the area of the float there the wires enter with a two-part epoxy to give it a better chance of not leaking. Just be sure not to interfere at all with the movement of the float.

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I will have to break out the multimeter and test for continuity, didn't think about that. I fell under the false pretense that providing redundancy with switches was a "fail safe" situation. Now I won't take "fail safe" literal. I'm not sure about the RKE capability of switching off after a set time, when triggered by an event, have to look that up. Digital Aquatics professional opinion was "there was a loss in communication, check you connections".

Still considering selling all of it and buying an Apex.

 

Thanks

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Wow. My salinity will fluctuate at times between 1.025 and 1.019 and have never seen any ill effects or stress. If this is "bad" then that's one more thing I have to worry about.

stability and consistency!!! How are you getting that big of a swing? If you are mixing at 1.025 and water changing with that and then using RODI, your system should stay consistent. But if you are buying at uncle bills in Greenwood.... there (just for you Ross) saltwater is usually 1.021 and is part of your problem.

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It's also a good idea to have multiple float switches. In designing my system I added a low, optimal, and high water alarms based on the float switches. Should the water reach the high water mark, all water changes and top off are suspended by cutting off power to LMIII and sounds alarm, sends e-mail, and text.

 

Technology will always fail, so predicting the worst is a good idea! Glad you did not suffer a major catastrophe such as Ed but is another reminder of how important this really is!!!!

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Yeah, I have an optimal and high switch. Both were triggered and the alarm was going off. Guess the head unit lost communication when the pump was on, keeping it on. I really need a low switch though. Wish I could do the email feature, living in the country limits my internet options, specifically with data caps. I feel for Ed. I sorta got lucky.

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