Auto Water Changes

[troynel]

Is there any positives or negatives to do smaller more frequent or larger shorter water changes?

 

[mpderksen]

Downside might be cost. I use the Apex DOS for mine. But for stability, it's made a big difference. Keep the new saltwater bucket and come back to refill when I get a text message that it's low.

 

[Member No. 1]

Plus side - stability, no more humping buckets!
Minus side - none that I can see

I do ~1.5 gallons/day on a 80 gallon

 

[nereefpat]

Downside: the dilution of pollution won't be as big, nor will the replacement of salts you are trying to accomplish. It's just how the math works out

 

[troynel]

I think you guys miss understand my question. My question is should I have the dos spread out the WC or do it all in an hour or so?

 

[cincyjim]

Downside might be cost. I use the Apex DOS for mine. But for stability, it's made a big difference. Keep the new saltwater bucket and come back to refill when I get a text message that it's low.

I'm very interested in this. Can you elaborate more on how this is done please. I have an Apex and I see that I would need to buy the doser as well as a couple of bins to hold the new saltwater and the old saltwater. I guess what I would be interested in knowing more on how you dispose of your old saltwater, i.e. carry it by bucket, run another pump to a drain? I also and gathering that you have the Apex turn off your ATO while the old water is being removed and the new water is being replaced... is that true or is removing 1 gallon of water from the sump not significant enough for the ATO to be engaged?

Thanks,
Jim

 

[troynel]

I have mixing tanks on the side of the house and run dosing tubing from my dos to one and the output to a drain near by outside. Currently I have it doing a 2 gallon a day change on my 100g tank. My Ato says on via my apex to turn on every 10 mins but have never seen it make a difference during the change.

 

[mpderksen]

Programing is easy. Set the volume and the time period. The DOS splits it into intervals for you. (My log shows 28mL at a time throughout the day)

I keep the New water is a brute, in the garage, drilled holes in the house and ran the tubing inside some PVC to protect it. Both the Old water and the overflow go down the French drain and out to the street.

 

[cincyjim]

That's nice that you can do it that way. My tank is in the basement which is located on the opposite side wall from the window so it would be pretty hard to do it the way you have. I would really like to make this work but I think I would have to have a pump in the used water bin to move it to the basement drain so I'm not carry a bin of water which really isn't feasible to do.

 

[mpderksen]

Auto Water Changes

I dig this stuff as much as fish and corals. Through the PVC, I also ran a bell wire and ran from float switches to the BOB. In your case, maybe you can run a long USB cable and stick an EB8 down there to program a pump for moving the old water to a drain? Actually, the old water can even go into a 5 gallon bucket next to the tank, and you just walk that to the sink? You could easily wire a switch there to alert you by text when it's full.

 

[cincyjim]

Thanks for the ideas. I'm thinking I can do the BOB with the float switch to move the water to the drain.

For the OP, I didn't mean to take over the thread... sorry. From I researched it would be better to spread out the water change during the week instead of one big one every week or two weeks.

 

[bearpeidog]

See this article on water changes: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-10/rhf/index.php#14

Randy approaches the question scientifically.