automatic water change

[brians4671]

Will the manufacturer of the product you support provide technical support after business hours? Will they take the time helping you when you are in a crisis? When your warranty ends will they take mercy on you when your unit fails? Will they show mercy if you suck up miniature snail shell that destroys your tubing and damages your control board with water damage? Will they walk you through maintenance when they are watching their child vpn in from home? What about when you have never purchased from us, and you get help when you have competitors products without getting a sale?

You don't just buy a product when you buy from companies. Situations like these are overlooked when you purchase from some over others. What happens when your motor fails, and the company wont warranty it because you made a mistake? It is folks like us that provided folks like you the knowhow on how to DIY.

I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend. IF you need any technical support on water purification or level control please let me know! I had the pleasure of hanging out with Eddie, Matt and a few others at MACNA Denver, and still at MACNA after hours I was providing support to people. This is my life. I am not just an employee of a company that clocks out at 5pm and forgets about work. I take this seriously.

Why not give us a chance? What possibly do you have to lose?

Jeremy

Jeremy

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[AquamanE]

Chill boys and girls.

This thread is about sharing ideas for AWC.

I agree that a clogged line can cause mayor issues, but thats what fail safe "adjuncts" are about, whether it be a float switch, or a duplex modulator. It doesnt matter.

All this means is that we have to look at our individual system and decide what is best for the "individual" system with regards to safety.

All advise is welcomed.

Brain I see the point you are trying to make.

Jeremy- We love you but, Brian is right. we know the value of your organization, and product (and the fact that you are a huge FMAS supporter). Please just state you idea and rationale without making this a commercial.:wavehand:

 

[SpectraPure]

Chill boys and girls.

I agree that a clogged line can cause mayor issues, but thats what fail safe "adjuncts" are about, whether it be a float switch, or a duplex modulator. It doesnt matter.

All this means is that we have to look at our individual system and decide what is best for the "individual" system with regards to safety.

All advise is welcomed.

Brain I see the point you are trying to make.

Jeremy- We love you but, Brian is right. we know the value of your organization, and product. Please just state you rationale without making this a commercial.:wavehand:

Oh Eddie I meant no harm. I felt the need to take him to school about his misrepresentation about our product. Hey Brian cant we all just get along??

Has stenner, masterflex, or Neptune chimed in on this thread to help people?

Have a great weekend guys!

Jeremy

 

[SpectraPure]

Have you guys ever thought about running your drain line from your show tank to fill your quarantine tank? Sometimes it makes sense, and sometimes it doesn't, but if you have the ability it does save you some salt water.

Jeremy

 

[BrettDS]

automatic water change

Then adds either new salt water or rodi water depending on the conductivity reading

Wow... You just totally blew my mind with this post... Salinity drift is something that I've definitely been thinking about lately as I considered the fact that water gets removed from my tank for testing or with my hands as I reach into the tank for maintenance fairly regularly and that water then gets replaced with fresh water through the ATO system. It also can drift if my NSW for my auto water change is slightly different than my tank water.

I'm doing AWC with a Neptune DOS and my ATO system consists of a float valve connected to my RO system and a solenoid valve controlled by my apex. The apex only allows the ATO to run for two minutes every hour so if the float valve fails it won't continually dump fresh water. I'm not sure I can compensate for salinity drift as you do, but now I'm definitely thinking about ideas to automate this.

Right now I'm thinking I may do something like this... Maybe 3 or 4 times a day I'll have the Apex look at my conductivity probe reading. If it's too low I'll fire up the NSW pump for a short time to add salt water. This will raise the water level in my sump a bit, but not enough to cause any problems and it will cause the ATO not to add any water for several cycles as the extra water evaporates off and the salinity level should rise slightly.

If the conductivity reading is too high, then I'll fire up the pump that pulls water from the tank for a few minutes to lower the level in the sump. Then the ATO system will replace that with fresh water the next time it cycles on and the salinity level should drop slightly.

By evaluating only a few times a day the system should have plenty of time to stabilize before the next cycle and it should ensure that any salinity adjustments happen very slowly.

What do you think of this?

 

[sbarkey]

automatic water change

Wow... You just totally blew my mind with this post... Salinity drift is something that I've definitely been thinking about lately as I considered the fact that water gets removed from my tank for testing or with my hands as I reach into the tank for maintenance fairly regularly and that water then gets replaced with fresh water through the ATO system. It also can drift if my NSW for my auto water change is slightly different than my tank water.

I'm doing AWC with a Neptune DOS and my ATO system consists of a float valve connected to my RO system and a solenoid valve controlled by my apex. The apex only allows the ATO to run for two minutes every hour so if the float valve fails it won't continually dump fresh water. I'm not sure I can compensate for salinity drift as you do, but now I'm definitely thinking about ideas to automate this.

Right now I'm thinking I may do something like this... Maybe 3 or 4 times a day I'll have the Apex look at my conductivity probe reading. If it's too low I'll fire up the NSW pump for a short time to add salt water. This will raise the water level in my sump a bit, but not enough to cause any problems and it will cause the ATO not to add any water for several cycles as the extra water evaporates off and the salinity level should rise slightly.

If the conductivity reading is too high, then I'll fire up the pump that pulls water from the tank for a few minutes to lower the level in the sump. Then the ATO system will replace that with fresh water the next time it cycles on and the salinity level should drop slightly.

By evaluating only a few times a day the system should have plenty of time to stabilize before the next cycle and it should ensure that any salinity adjustments happen very slowly.

What do you think of this?

First off, if I'm understanding you correctly, I would no top off water directly from your RODI filter for a number of reasons. First, should your fail safes fail, there is an infinite amount of water to add to the system causing an overflow and potentially huge salinity drop in the system. Secondly, look up TDS creep. The first few minutes of water should be sent to drain and include a flush period to extend the RO membrane life. I would collect your production water, following the to drain and flush guidelines above, and use that for your ATO. Much safer in many ways, but obviously requires another pump...

With that said, you can achieve what I'm doing won't your current setup and my recommended changes. Simply call for either RO OR NSW when your system goes to run the ATO programming. You could either pull NSW with the DoS or kick on your RODI unit to achieve this. If you add the setup I'm talking about you would either add NSW with the DoS or add RO with the new pump.

Obviously you would need the Apex to activate the ATO functions, so you can specify what to add, rather than a directly connected Float-and-solenoid solution for your RO. If you have a BoB, you can use that to monitor sump levels and trigger the event, or build a DIY BoB. Just search the forums for the project as many have done it.

Does that answer your questions?

 

[SpectraPure]

Wow... You just totally blew my mind with this post... Salinity drift is something that I've definitely been thinking about lately as I considered the fact that water gets removed from my tank for testing or with my hands as I reach into the tank for maintenance fairly regularly and that water then gets replaced with fresh water through the ATO system. It also can drift if my NSW for my auto water change is slightly different than my tank water.

I'm doing AWC with a Neptune DOS and my ATO system consists of a float valve connected to my RO system and a solenoid valve controlled by my apex. The apex only allows the ATO to run for two minutes every hour so if the float valve fails it won't continually dump fresh water. I'm not sure I can compensate for salinity drift as you do, but now I'm definitely thinking about ideas to automate this.

Right now I'm thinking I may do something like this... Maybe 3 or 4 times a day I'll have the Apex look at my conductivity probe reading. If it's too low I'll fire up the NSW pump for a short time to add salt water. This will raise the water level in my sump a bit, but not enough to cause any problems and it will cause the ATO not to add any water for several cycles as the extra water evaporates off and the salinity level should rise slightly.

If the conductivity reading is too high, then I'll fire up the pump that pulls water from the tank for a few minutes to lower the level in the sump. Then the ATO system will replace that with fresh water the next time it cycles on and the salinity level should drop slightly.

By evaluating only a few times a day the system should have plenty of time to stabilize before the next cycle and it should ensure that any salinity adjustments happen very slowly.

What do you think of this?

Using your RODI to top-off your sump or tank will led lead to shorter DI life, and the greater chance of algae and/or bacteria blooms. The RO membrane produces very high tds in short bursts. DI cartridge life is based on ppm gallons. Thus the lower the tds being produced by the membrane the longer the DI lasts. Have you ever noticed your ro tds super high when you first start up your system? Then as it runs it drops to what it normally produces.

It is always recommended to have an ATO unit to top-off your tank.

Jeremy

 

[zachts]

Have you guys ever thought about running your drain line from your show tank to fill your quarantine tank? Sometimes it makes sense, and sometimes it doesn't, but if you have the ability it does save you some salt water.

Jeremy

I do this with a three head masterflex but to my frag tank then to drain........ been running for over a year now and love it!

 

[zachts]

Using your RODI to top-off your sump or tank will led lead to shorter DI life, and the greater chance of algae and/or bacteria blooms. The RO membrane produces very high tds in short bursts. DI cartridge life is based on ppm gallons. Thus the lower the tds being produced by the membrane the longer the DI lasts. Have you ever noticed your ro tds super high when you first start up your system? Then as it runs it drops to what it normally produces.

It is always recommended to have an ATO unit to top-off your tank.

Jeremy

All depends on the input water, we have very clean awesome tap water quality here and I run my RO/DI as direct top off and get nearly a year out of my resin......also using it to irrigate plants on the porch and a few plants in the basement, along with a misting tray for starting vegetable cuttings periodically.......

BTW I use one of YOUR direct top off control systems for this......

 

[SpectraPure]

Regardless of the input just because it is reading 0 tds coming out of the RO doesn't mean that there isn't better. no matter what the numeric value is if you can half it you double your di life. having 100 tds coming out of your ro and reducing it to 50 is the same thing as .10 reducing it to .05 tds. It still will double your DI life.

Jeremy

 

[BrettDS]

automatic water change

Using your RODI to top-off your sump or tank will led lead to shorter DI life

Yeah, I am aware of this, but I do appreciate you guys mentioning it. Unfortunately, in my case I just don't have any space left for a reservoir to hold fresh water, so I'm taking the hit on my DI resin with my eyes wide open. At some point the plan is to add a FOWLR tank to my system which will give me some additional space under it's stand and a fresh water reservoir is at the top of my list of things to use that space for, but I'm not sure when that's going to happen. It's probably months down the road at best.

 

[BrettDS]

automatic water change

With that said, you can achieve what I'm doing won't your current setup and my recommended changes. Simply call for either RO OR NSW when your system goes to run the ATO programming. You could either pull NSW with the DoS or kick on your RODI unit to achieve this. If you add the setup I'm talking about you would either add NSW with the DoS or add RO with the new pump.

Yeah, as I've been thinking about it overnight I realized that I could do something like that. Right now I have the system configured to add and remove water at the same time slowly throughout the day. It changes about 1 gallon per day a few ml at a time every few minutes. I could always reconfigure it to pull the old water first, then replace it with fresh or salt water. However, I'd also have to change it so it did larger amounts a few times a day instead of the continuous change its doing now, but I don't want to cause too much of a swing too quickly either.

Assuming my calculations are correct (and I did them around midnight last night, so no guarantees) then pulling one cup of salt water and replacing it with fresh water will decrease the salinity by about .025ppt in my system that contains about 85G of water. Adding an extra cup of salt water instead of fresh water to replace evaporated water will raise the salinity by about .025ppt. If I do this 4 times a day, 6 hours apart, this will allow a max adjustment of .1ppt per day, .025ppt at a time, which should definitely be slow enough not to cause problems.

So I'm thinking I'll continue to run my AWC as is, then 4 times a day I'll have the apex evaluate the salinity and if it's too high it will pull one cup of salt water and let the ATO system replace it. If the salinity is too low it will add one cup of salt water and thus prevent the ATO system from adding a cup of fresh water.

 

[SpectraPure]

Yeah, I am aware of this, but I do appreciate you guys mentioning it. Unfortunately, in my case I just don't have any space left for a reservoir to hold fresh water, so I'm taking the hit on my DI resin with my eyes wide open. At some point the plan is to add a FOWLR tank to my system which will give me some additional space under it's stand and a fresh water reservoir is at the top of my list of things to use that space for, but I'm not sure when that's going to happen. It's probably months down the road at best.

I use a 5 gallon jug for my ato water. Make sure it is bpa free. I have mine set up on dual floats with a failsafe mechanical float at the top. This automates my RODI system without experiencing tds creep. Some ATO units can travel hundreds of feet reliably, and others cannot. So if one piece of quarter inch tubing can make it to your sump, then we can place the top-off reservoir wherever.

If you have any questions pertaining to what can be done to optimize your rig please do ask.

Jeremy

 

[SpectraPure]

I do this with a three head masterflex but to my frag tank then to drain........ been running for over a year now and love it!

Yeah it helps out a ton if you can recycle your show tanks water. Kudos! Hey how long do those motors last? I am curious to understand what the load on the motor is being that it is controlling 3 heads. I have experienced single head motors lasting 30,000 gallons.

 

[zachts]

Yeah it helps out a ton if you can recycle your show tanks water. Kudos! Hey how long do those motors last? I am curious to understand what the load on the motor is being that it is controlling 3 heads. I have experienced single head motors lasting 30,000 gallons.

Mine is using a Pittman-Ametek 65.5:1 Gear motor. Roughly 70 or so RPM at the pump heads (I have it dialed way down with a PWM Motor control to somewhere around 15rpm so it runs quietly).
Motor specs:
http://www.automationexpress.com/Products/DC_Motors/pdf/GM9236S026.pdf

Not sure what the life span is, never found that info. I'm sure its out there just haven't looked that hard (I snagged four setups for $40 each so have more than enough spares if one ever dies) But I've taken one apart that got submerged when my basement flooded to clean and dry it out and they are very well built, heavy duty industrial quality.

Pump heads each need roughly 90 oz/in startup and 25 oz/in continuous with the norprene LS 16 tubing installed.

 

[DavidinGA]

Considering an auto setup.

What's the startup cost for these?

Thanks

 

[SpectraPure]

Considering an auto setup.

What's the startup cost for these?

Thanks

It depends on if you want to do it yourself, already own an apex, or if you want a complete setup with no apex.

Our setup is roughly 420 dollars with a 5 year warranty.

You can find used or new stenner pumps for roughly 250 to 400, but you will need tubing, and some other misc items

The dos is about 350, but you already have to have an apex.

There are a few other options out there, but these are the best 3

Jeremy

 

[DavidinGA]

It depends on if you want to do it yourself, already own an apex, or if you want a complete setup with no apex.

Our setup is roughly 420 dollars with a 5 year warranty.

You can find used or new stenner pumps for roughly 250 to 400, but you will need tubing, and some other misc items

The dos is about 350, but you already have to have an apex.

There are a few other options out there, but these are the best 3

Jeremy

Ok.

I'm running Reef Angel myself; so no dos option I suppose.

What model Stenner pump are guys using? High gpd? Low gpd? Does it really matter?



I was looking at the 170DMP5 pump. At 170gpd the pump would still have to run for about 17 minutes to do a 2 gallon water change (what I would like daily).

 

[sbarkey]

Ok.



I'm running Reef Angel myself; so no dos option I suppose.



What model Stenner pump are guys using?

Look into peristaltic pumps, I use Grey Beard pumps for speed and reliability, but many others will do.

Then control them with an outlet and use floats to monitor water levels for starting stopping pumps. Not totally familiar with Reef Angel systems, but I assume they can do outlet control and float monitoring...

If not, Sternner dual head and a timer.

Good luck.

 

[DavidinGA]

Look into peristaltic pumps, I use Grey Beard pumps for speed and reliability, but many others will do.

Then control them with an outlet and use floats to monitor water levels for starting stopping pumps. Not totally familiar with Reef Angel systems, but I assume they can do outlet control and float monitoring...

If not, Sternner dual head and a timer.

Good luck.

First I've heard of "grey beard". They don't appear to be dual head designs...I thought the whole clamor for the Stenner pumps was that they are a dual head design that pretty much guarantees equal in/out amounts when running? Do they rely on floats for volume in/out accuracy?