Tunze Osmolator

[Palmer]

Good deal hopefully I have success as well lol

[lorenz0]

To be honest i love the unit. But cleaning the sensor became a weekly chore. After bringing it to my parents they let the resivour drain all the way and the pump ran so much that the modual actually shorted (opened it up to find the casing with a melting point). So I bought a new unit ha ha ha i love this thing

[trilinearmipmap]

I have to clean my optical sensor about every six months. Once or twice the unit temporarily failed on me due to buildup on the optical sensor and a cleaning with vinegar water got it working again.

I am on my 3rd osmolator. One was destroyed by water damage, the 2nd the optical head went after a few years. These things seem pricey and not as robust as some of the other auto-topoff choices.

The osmolators work very well to detect tiny changes in the water level eg. if I remove 30 or 40 mL of water from my aquarium then my osmolator will sense the difference and kick in. However on another tank I have an Auto-Topoff dot com float valve based topoff system and while it is not as accurate as the Osmolator, it does the job well enough.

[fkshiu]

I have had the same osmolator going for over 4 years now and still going strong (knock on wood). The sensor gets a good cleaning every few months with a scrub and vinegar dip and the pump gets replaced every couple of years. One of the best investments I've ever made in reefing.

[NanoHuman]

The main reason to use an osmolator is that float valves are based off very simple mechanical switch properties that fail or give a wrong reading causing flooding eventually. I plan on getting one sometime soon.

[Palmer]

Originally Posted by fkshiu

I have had the same osmolator going for over 4 years now and still going strong (knock on wood). The sensor gets a good cleaning every few months with a scrub and vinegar dip and the pump gets replaced every couple of years. One of the best investments I've ever made in reefing.

I agree "when" it works it works great. Looking back through the search function a few other can reef members have had similar problems. So I suppose it has a failure rate like everything else.

[Palmer]

Update- I sent my osmolator back and they sent me a new unit. Not bad!