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Water evaporation top off


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I'm starting this thread to see what everyone does to replenish daily water evap in their tank setup.

 

Please post what you do to keep your tank full of water! And specify if you top off with freshwater, saltwater, tap water or what ever it is you may do. There is a resson I am asking for everyone's opinion.... is to resolve a matter of differences between myself and another person :)

 

Myself: I have my tank setup on a 15g water resivor that is gravity fed to a float valve in my return pump section in my sump. I refill the 15g jug with R/O water every week to two weeks.

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Tunze ATO with a 5 gallon rodi container when I had my 75gallon. I had a prior float switch DIY ato which worked for a few years but as time went on the switches started to go bad and make noise...

The new tank I will have a water changing station with a tunze ato and a 55 gallon rotomold rodi storage tank

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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RODI water only. Salt does not evaporate Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using Tapatalk

This is the main part of the disagreement. It's exactly what I've stated to them. Just wanted a thread full of responses to send to them
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I have a 5 gallon bucket of RO/DI with a Dual ATO switch from autotop off and an aqualifter for a pump. I lose about a gallon a day on my 125.

 

On my 75 I used a similar setup with a gravity fed float. Very easy to use.

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I don't have the best setup for top-off, but I use RODI water only (not tap or saltwater), a 5 gallon clear jug that I fill up about once every three or four days. A JBJ system with the old float style switch hooked up to sensor A and a Tom's Aqualifter to get it from the 5 gallon jug to the sump under my tank.

 

I have had no issues with changes in salinity for going on two months now with this setup, though it is a pain to refill the 5 gallon from my RODI unit.

 

One of the things I learned is never to top off with saltwater or water out of the tap, RODI water only.

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The general rule is to top off with RODI only, which I agree with completely.

 

There have been studies done to observe the affect of salinity fluctuations by some research aquariums by topping off with 35ppt salt water and keeping meticulously regulated water changes with a lower salinity solution to better simulate natural ocean conditions which are never 100% stable. This has to be done with spot on testing and knowing what extreme changes your animals can and can't stand up to. I don't know if results have been posted or if the studies are still ongoing, I'll see if I can't find the write up.

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DI for top-off, with an appropriately sized holding container.

 

For the floats, im using the apex on the big system, and a ReefFanatic level controller on the others. I use the TOM Aqualifters for moving the water from the holding container to the sump, they hold up well, are cheap, and if anything goes weird, the flow is slow enough to keep it from being bad by dropping the pH or salinity too fast.

 

Another reason I only use appropriately sized holding containers, even though it may be convenient to have a really big storage capacity, it sucks to lose a tank over a snail that holds a float open and dumps that really big storage all over the tank, floor, basement... For my ~100 gallon setup at home, I have a 10 gallon container, even if it completely dumps via the Aqualifter, its done over a long period of time, and it won't overflow my sump. :)

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RO/DI is the only way for me and I plan to do the same as Plantguy. Ill have an apex and and a tunze 3155 on the new tank. Ill probably just slap a 10gal tank in the stand for an ato reservoir. That should last a week and at which point I should probably check on things anyhow.

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