anybody doing automated daily wc's?

G

glennr1978

New member
I'm thinking about doing this. My tank is small (20g SPS dominant)) so my bubble magus doser should be able to handle the task. I plan to have it only change out about 1/2g per day. My goal is to make my little system even more stable than it already is.

The only obvious downside I see is the possibility of equipment failure. I'm just wondering if the risk is worth the reward? Or would I be better off just continuing my weeky wc schedule?

Would the daily repelenishment of trace elements be all that much more beneficial to my system than weekly wc's? Clearly it would increase stability, but do you guys think it would be enough to see any noticable difference in my corals?
 
Will it work???? Yes! Is it efficient??? No!

Is there a way you can shut off your pump so the old water will overflow as the new water flows in? I have this on my current SPS tank. As I pump in cooler new water, the warmer old water overflows into a PVC pipeline that plumbs to our sump pump. It takes me less than three minutes to do a water change.

Warmest Regards,
James
 
honestly, for a 20 gallon tank i think that is overkill. as long as you PH, alk, mag, Ca, are kept
within normal ranges you should be just fine. I do not think a coral will grow much faster if
you kept Ca at 420 throughout the week versus having Ca drop down to 400 when you are
due for a water change after seven days. Your normal dosing schedule will help keep it within
normal specs.

I also agree with your thought that equipment failure is always a possibility. I prefer the
KISS method. Keep It Simple Stupid. Just make up 20 gallons of salt water in the basement
in one batch and that will get you through the month. Water changes are the easy part
in my mind. It is testing that seems time consuming if you are like me and run two different
brands of test for each important thing.
 
This can be done and it is actually better than doing larger more frequent water changes. Also because it is automated it is easier to do because it requires less work on your end.

Here is an article by Randy Farley Holmes about water changes. Near the very bottom there is a brief paragraph on continuous/daily water changes.
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-10/rhf/index.php
 
CUNAReefer said:
Will it work???? Yes! Is it efficient??? No!

Is there a way you can shut off your pump so the old water will overflow as the new water flows in? I have this on my current SPS tank. As I pump in cooler new water, the warmer old water overflows into a PVC pipeline that plumbs to our sump pump. It takes me less than three minutes to do a water change.

Warmest Regards,
James
Click to expand...


I'm not sure I'm following what you're saying.... All i want to do is use one pump to pull water from the tank, and the other pump to pump new sw back into the tank (I'm currently only using 1 of the pumps on my triple doser). I can set my skimmer, ato, return pump, and mp10 to all turn off while the wc is being performed.

I'm not really all that concerned about the time this would save me, or get out of doing wc's. I'm only considering doing it to increase overall stability.
 
fcmatt said:
honestly, for a 20 gallon tank i think that is overkill. as long as you PH, alk, mag, Ca, are kept
within normal ranges you should be just fine. I do not think a coral will grow much faster if
you kept Ca at 420 throughout the week versus having Ca drop down to 400 when you are
due for a water change after seven days. Your normal dosing schedule will help keep it within
normal specs.

I also agree with your thought that equipment failure is always a possibility. I prefer the
KISS method. Keep It Simple Stupid. Just make up 20 gallons of salt water in the basement
in one batch and that will get you through the month. Water changes are the easy part
in my mind. It is testing that seems time consuming if you are like me and run two different
brands of test for each important thing.
Click to expand...

I would think that it would be even more effective in a small tank like mine since the slightest change causes larger fluctuations. I'm a firm believer in KISS, lol. In fact, that's kinda been the basic principle for my tank. By automating wc's I'm making things even simpler while also creating a more stable environment.

I plan to do a trial run just to make sure that both pumps are flowing at the same rate. If that goes well then I think I'm going to go ahead and give it a shot. I'll keep you guys posted on whether or not I see any results.
 
Yeah, let us know how it works out. I've been trying a 1qt w/c every couple days on a 24gal and then once a month or so do a regular large waterchange. Only thing I thought about with automated w/c is if the w/c happens when the ATO hasnt topped off for awhile vs when the ATO has just topped off the tank. If that makes sense! Just thinking that it could throw off the salinity after a few days or weeks.
 
I think the advantages of automating water changes for small tanks (under 40gals) are questionable. Larger tanks are a different matter. I've been running an automated system for more than a year and a half. Here's a writeup I did for my website: Auto Water Change
 
I love having automatic water changes. I use my LiterMeter III with remote pump and water exchange module to do 10+% water changes weekly as well as top off. With an LMIII I have a large draw height and can draw from basement Brute 44 with no problems.

I then use the BM T01 to do my dosing of alk, calcium, and mag in the stand as you don't have the draw height available with these weaker pumps. If I had a dedicated room like the earlier poster mentioned...I'd just have a drain pipe set as the overflow on the sump and have a pump set up on timer to push water to the sump. When it fills new water old water would overflow to drain pipe:)
 
GlassReef said:
I think the advantages of automating water changes for small tanks (under 40gals) are questionable. Larger tanks are a different matter. I've been running an automated system for more than a year and a half. Here's a writeup I did for my website: Auto Water Change
Click to expand...

Great wrieup! I need to get off my butt and get this little project started already.
 
I'm interested to see if I have positive results from having more stable lelements such as strontium, iron, potassium etc.. I don't test (or dose) for these things but have read that they do play a role in overall coral health
 
Lol, lelements = elements.

I went and bought a 5.5g tank from petco and have set the pump up for a trial run. I'll post accuracy resluts in a little while.
 
I did a trial fw run for the last 24 hours and that went well. So now I've got the system up and running on my tank. Wish me luck!
 
saltygeek said:
Yeah, let us know how it works out. I've been trying a 1qt w/c every couple days on a 24gal and then once a month or so do a regular large waterchange. Only thing I thought about with automated w/c is if the w/c happens when the ATO hasnt topped off for awhile vs when the ATO has just topped off the tank. If that makes sense! Just thinking that it could throw off the salinity after a few days or weeks.
Click to expand...


The float switch on my ATO is very sensitive and I'm only using an aqualifter w/ it so my salinity stays spot on all the time.
 
Here's a couple pics as requested.

It's really very simple.
009-1.jpg


The brains, lol.
010.jpg


All the necessary tubing.
013-1.jpg


FTS from a couple of days ago.
018-1.jpg


Sorry about the crap pics, I just used my phone to take them.
 
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