I see this question a lot. Someone has been printing a while and they look at the front of their EcoTank and determine that they need ink. Or the “helpful” notification has popped up to tell you to check your ink levels because dire things can happen if ink levels are low. Whatever the reason, they are trying to refill the printer and nothing is going in.

There are two basic reasons for this:

• The ink tanks are full
• The ink tanks are not full but the bottle is not seated properly and is not making a good seal.

Before I get into my explanations, let me ask you a two-part question: Is this your first tank printer of any kind (Epson EcoTank, Canon MegaTank, HP SmartTank)? And on your EcoTank, have you printed 100 or fewer prints? My guess is the answer is yes.

If this is your first experience with tank printers, you are probably used to those tiny tri-color cartridges that run out of ink after about 50 or so full page prints. There are about 5ml of ink total in those cartridges! That’s a teaspoon of ink! (For $30-$60! Yikes, that’s expensive!) Each EcoTank tank holds between 65ml and 128ml (65ml each if they take 522 ink, like the ET-2800, or 70ml for the three colors and 128ml for the black if it takes 502 ink, like the ET-15000). With either capacity, if you’ve printed less than 100 pages, you’ve used less than 10% of the ink in the printer and it’s probably still full with so little used that unless you’re looking carefully, the fronts of the tanks will be quite dark. If you have the Epson ink in them, all four tanks look quite dark and sorta indistinguishable from each other. Sublimation ink also looks quite dark except for the yellow, which is quite bright and obviously yellow.

Here’s what the fronts of the ink tanks look like when tanks are partially used, which is helpful to see what an empty tanks would look like (colors of the top quarter of each tank) or full (looking like the bottom three-quarters). Lighting in the room makes a big difference in how different each color looks.

Note how the top is a dull, translucent gray that is much lighter than the ink color so it’s easy to see the ink levels. If you’re still not certain, shine a flashlight into the tanks at a very close range. Yellow and magenta really show their colors, so look at those two, first.

If this is your first experience with tank printers, you are probably used to those tiny tri-color cartridges that run out of ink after about 50 or so full page prints. These EcoTanks hold over 30 cartridges worth of ink! If you’ve printed less than 100 pages, you’ve used less than 10% of the ink in the printer and it’s probably still full, giving you the dark fronts on the tank. Note: the sublimation printer photo was taken after I had been printing with this printer for 7 months; I’m a hobbyist and do not sell, but I do make a lot of things. That’s all the ink I had used for over 200 prints!

The tanks and bottles are designed to stop accepting ink when they are full. This prevents leaking or overflowing. If the tanks overflow, there’s no bottom to catch the ink so it will run onto whatever surface is under your printer. The engineers have designed these tanks and bottles to not make a mess.

But I’m sure my tanks need more ink

Do they? Unless the tanks are at the bottom line, the one with the downward triangle right above it, you don’t need to add ink, although you definitely can add any extra that was leftover in the bottles after the initial fill. But don’t go out and buy new ink until you absolutely need to. Since it took me 7 months to use a quarter tank of ink, and after 3 years, I still haven’t used all the ink, had I topped it off after 7 months, both the ink in the tanks and the inks in the bottles would be over two years old. Ink does have a shelf life (longer than 2 years or whatever is printed on the bottles), so I’d rather wait as long as possible before buying new ink. I’ve indicated in brackets where I add ink. It’s in the bottom half of the distance between the bottom two lines. Just don’t let it go below that bottom line, as printing without ink can permanently damage the printhead.

OK, I really DO need to add ink and it’s not going in

If the ink tanks are truly empty, sometimes the bottles don’t make a good seal when inverted onto the tanks. If the bottle has a keyed top (wings on the top so you can’t put the black in the yellow), ensure the wings are securely under the tabs. Whether it has the keys for one of the two kinds of EcoTank ink or if it is a universal top that doesn’t have a key, gently wiggle it from side-to-side and/or press down on the top to make a good seal with the tank. Do not squeeze the sides of the bottle unless you want to clean up the ink that will leak out of the bottle and pool under the printer! If a gentle press on the top works while you’re pressing it, you may want to put an item with some weight on the top, like a pair of pliers, to keep pressure on the bottle to keep that good seal. The seal is important to getting the proper flow of ink from the bottle into the tanks.

Remember that the bottles and tanks are designed to stop when it’s full so it doesn’t make a mess. Do not squeeze a little extra into the tank!