How To - Automatic water change

[benner]

I was trying to do ato with one optical level sensor like I was told is the best way by aqua digital. I will not be using solenoids ever again!
I have a sps system so I have a lot of water flow. When I do a feed pause it kills most water flow/turbulence in my tank.....this lowers the water level in my sump slightly and turns on ato..... There is currently no way to prevent this according to matthias and I have found posts from over a year ago from people asking for this to be fixed. How are you doing ato with two sensors Antonio? Can you explain? Pictures say a 1000 words


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[aqua_digital]

When I do a feed pause it kills most water flow/turbulence in my tank.....this lowers the water level in my sump slightly and turns on ato.....

Hi Ben,

To help us understand your issue better, can you post here how the sump level drops when you do a feedpause? Where does the water go?

The sump I assume is below your main tank and water either goes out via the main pump or most likely when the main pump shuts off drains into the sump thus raising the level. You have got me baffled how your sump drops in level.

When I do a feedpause my sump rises as the main pump is switched off. if I turn off just the circulation pumps there is no effect on the ATO. My further understanding is even if the for some reason the ATO did come on it would only be to top up this tiny drop and would balance itself out on restart through overfill evaporation.

For us to establish a best solution for your situation we need to understand the physics to your system and know where the water is draining from in your sump to lower the sump water level?

Please can you post a picture of this actual failed solenoid? I want to see if it is the same we have and also recently purchased for our new build. Or send me the photo and I will post here. If there are fail false solenoids out there its important everyone can see the type also. I will also on Monday will contact the supplier you and I used directly for their comments to the type of solenoid they are supplying as the last thing we want to do is recommend a fail false product. I will also purchase one and take it apart just to be sure the info provided is accurate.

[benner]

The only conclusion I can come to is that the water volume is made larger by the turbulence from power heads.....I do not kill my return pump or my wavebox.....just power heads.....I have five tunze 6055s.....the sump level lowers very slightly (probably can't even see to the naked eye) but this activates the extremely accurate optical level sensor for ato.....it takes approx 5 to 6 mins to complete this topoff if power heads are left off.....power heads are only left off for 5 mins during feedpause so the ato never actually catches up during feedpause. However, I have my level sensor set to time out after 1 minute......alarm goes off during very feedpause to tell me that the ato timed out.....only way to make it work was to let it run for the full 5 to 6 mins during and after feedpause.....I have been informed by other sources that this solenoid is not intended for that long of continuous use anyways......I do three feedpause a every days.....so too hard on the solenoid.....when it failed I have since scrapped the whole p3 ato idea.....I can maybe see how two sensors would allow a larger tolerance much like the tunze has.....tunze allows a fluctuation of approx .2 to .3 ms whereas the optical sensor from ghl allows pretty much zero fluctuation.....
I do still have the two optical sensors, are you using optical sensors Antonio?


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[doggydoc10]

I am using one optical one mechanical sensor.
I will email you pics once I get home later today

[aqua_digital]

In this case you can use the delay on feature of the ATO so the level has to be below this timed level for the ATO to actuate.

You have two excellent fail safes

1. Reaction time (delay on) to stop water turbulance or minor changes such as this
2. safety time out. (as far as i am aware this will not overide the delay on and no false alarm will sound)

Programming guide manual explanation

3.2.1 Reaction time
Here the Reaction time the level sensor can be set between 0 s and 240 s. To prevent that movements of the
water surface lead permanently to an activation of a sensor and through this a belonging switchable socket is
switched on and off all the time, ProfiLuxmonitors if the signal (= water there/not there) transmitted by the sensor is
stable. Stablemeans in this case that a change of the level has to remain constantly at least for the set reaction time.
Only if the level is stable, the level control reacts. The reaction time shall be set sufficiently so that waves don’t cause
an activation of the regulation, but small enough that a reached level is not recognized too late!

Both would not have stopped your fail false solenoid issue of course but I am very keen to see this type solenoid as it clearly must be avoided, I have never seen one made like this before.

[reef]

Sound like major drama.

I was using a tunze ato and using the ghl as a alarm should the tunze fail, it has worked out well. i had fresh water in a 200L bin,

This week i actually connected a solenoid valve to the tunze so that it gets water directly from the mains as i keep running out of water in the 200L bin.
I still have the GHL as back up so if the Tunze fails then the GHL will trigger a Alarm if the sump gets to a certain level,

A good idea is to reduce the out flow from the solenoid valve so that if it ever failed then it can only put in a limited amount of water , so basically it could top up freshwater all day and it will not have a major effect.

My big issue is doing water changers on my tank. I have been waiting for a year for GHL to fix these so that i can stop the level control until i finish my manual water changers as i am sick of getting alarms.

Over the years i found the alarms are mainly from the level sensors due to various reasons, so as you can see this is a very important area.


Another thing to be aware of.

solenoid valves needs pressure to work, so if the pressure is not enough going threw them it is likely that it may not work correctly. most solenoid valve will not work with no pressure to force them open or close.

[aqua_digital]

My big issue is doing water changers on my tank. I have been waiting for a year for GHL to fix these so that i can stop the level control until i finish my manual water changers as i am sick of getting alarms.

This is important feedback. I think more a feature request? If I am right from the above quote, you want a level control over ride when doing manual water changes so alarms do not go off? I agree this would be a beneficial feature for those not using AWC. In the meantime when you are accessing the profiLux to turn off your sump pump and skimmer etc you could also turn alarms off at the same time?

solenoid valves needs pressure to work, so if the pressure is not enough going threw them it is likely that it may not work correctly. most solenoid valve will not work with no pressure to force them open or close.

This depends more on the type of solenoid, electro magnetic solenoids need no pressure to work however excess pressure can stop them closing if the pressure load is greater than the spring return rating of the solenoid, this is why I put the solenoid on the flow side not the mains pressure side. There is little pressure on the flow side and providing you are using a pressure close valve on the mains water side, there should be no back pressure build up.

[reef]

In the meantime when you are accessing the profiLux to turn off your sump pump and skimmer etc you could also turn alarms off at the same time?

Sure but it takes time especially if you have 4 sensors and it is a pain to turn everything off.

This is important feedback. I think more a feature request? If I am right from the above quote, you want a level control over ride when doing manual water changes so alarms do not go off?

Have been requesting this for over a year, surly everyone else who has a profilux must have the same problem when making water changers . as soon as you turn off your main pump all the alarms go off as the water in the sump rises.

[ninobart]

Hi,

I have setup my ato/awc as aqua digital has advised in his thread and have no problems what so ever. Don't have my water level in my sump or dp drop when I turn of my vortechs during feed pause. Also tunze osmolator optical solenoid looks exactly like the ghl ones. I'm pretty happy with the setup given by aqua digital.

[benner]

In this case you can use the delay on feature of the ATO so the level has to be below this timed level for the ATO to actuate.

You have two excellent fail safes

1. Reaction time (delay on) to stop water turbulance or minor changes such as this
2. safety time out. (as far as i am aware this will not overide the delay on and no false alarm will sound)

Programming guide manual explanation

3.2.1 Reaction time
Here the Reaction time the level sensor can be set between 0 s and 240 s. To prevent that movements of the
water surface lead permanently to an activation of a sensor and through this a belonging switchable socket is
switched on and off all the time, ProfiLuxmonitors if the signal (= water there/not there) transmitted by the sensor is
stable. Stablemeans in this case that a change of the level has to remain constantly at least for the set reaction time.
Only if the level is stable, the level control reacts. The reaction time shall be set sufficiently so that waves don’t cause
an activation of the regulation, but small enough that a reached level is not recognized too late!

Both would not have stopped your fail false solenoid issue of course but I am very keen to see this type solenoid as it clearly must be avoided, I have never seen one made like this before.

I had my ato sensor set to 10s reaction time.....this worked good minus my other problems....my solenoid was at my tank and had very little pressure build up on it....especially after being opened for a few secs....I will provide a pic of it in a bit....maybe in the next post It worked perfect right up to the point where now it sticks open every time it is energized and then de energized.....I will be using pumps from here on in....much safer IMO.... I am building a custom acrylic ato with 4 additional additive sections....I will run my line from rodi unit to this acrylic tank and put on a manual valve as well as a mech float valve....I will be running alk, calcium, and mag in the additive reservoirs....I bought 3 BM 5L additive containers but I will not be using them......takes up too much space....I will continue to run the tunze osmo. I really wanted to get my ato set up too because I needed to get rid of my current 6gallon bucket feeding tunze osmo in order to set up my doser with additives....but now I will just do it all at once with this acrylic tank instead.....


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