Evaporation

I top off my 52 gallon with one gallon a day manually. I will look at an ATO though once I have a sump.

 

If you are decent at DIY, you can buy a kit from autotopoff.com. That, a container, and a $20 aqualifter pump and you have yourself a $50-60 ATO

 

Marshall is right...ATO's can be DIY'd pretty easily.

One thing about the aqualifters, is they really do need the optional intake filter or they quit working very quickly (even then, I've never had them work reliably for long). Personally, I'd use a small powerhead or hobby pump instead of the aqualifter.

 

Huh, I have been using two now for over a year. One with the pre-filter, one without. Both have worked flawlessly so far. I do use an MJ-1200 I had lying around for my 46BF though.

 

Dood...we bought 3 of them to use as ATO pumps a few years back and they all went south fairly quickly. Have they changed them? I thought they were gonna be "the answer", but I went back to using "real" pumps.

Glad yours are working tho.

 

i have been using a aqualifter for my top off for over 2 years. no prefilter. never had a issue, i mean ive never even looked at the thing since i hooked it up.

mine is about as cheap as it gets.
single switch from autotopoff.com $40
aqualifter $11
my resevoir is a 10g tank so even if the single switch gets stuck it still wont overflow my sump, and since the aqualifter can run dry there is no chance of damaging the pump. pretty fail safe ime.

 

Wow...we must have gotten some "lemons" or something, cuz they really put me off when 3 of 3 went bad within a week or two, and the water was indeed RO/DI with a TDS of zero (Renee is a stickler for that).

 

How is Renee' doing??