Dos Awc

[rffanat1c]

So I am setting up my Dos for AWC. I am debating between one 24 hour or several small over each day. Nevermind the pros and cons of the two, I am more concerned right now of the pump failing on and overfilling or draining my tank. I do not have any of the safeguards yet due to funds. Anyone have any experience of these things failing or something blocking the OSW line sucking water out of the tank?


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[richard_dicosimo]

I am debating the exact same setup. I saw an episode of brstv where they did this and I was thinking about the exact same concerns you brought up. Hopefully someone who has run this setup will chime in.

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[dkeller_nc]

To put it bluntly, do not set up an AWC system without the proper funds to put in safeguards. It's definitely not worth it, both from the standpoint of the health of your animals and the possible (massive) property damage that could occur.

And yes, even sophisticated systems like the Neptune DOS can and do fail. Not a big deal if you have the proper leak and water height sensors on your system. Absolutely disastrous if not.

 

[rffanat1c]

To put it bluntly, do not set up an AWC system without the proper funds to put in safeguards. It's definitely not worth it, both from the standpoint of the health of your animals and the possible (massive) property damage that could occur.

And yes, even sophisticated systems like the Neptune DOS can and do fail. Not a big deal if you have the proper leak and water height sensors on your system. Absolutely disastrous if not.

Kinda what I figured. That's why I have been debating an AWC for 2 years as it is


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[reelredfish]

Mine has been working perfect. Do 2 gallons total in a span of 24 hours.

Some float switches wired up and programmed along with leak detectors should do the trick. So dont think your safeguards have to cost a fotune.

My setup was hard to do. I glued 1” pvc that goes all the way from garage across the entire house in the attic. Inside of it is the pex tubing for ATO, OSW, NSW. This way those lines are protected in the attic and if one fails it will drain inside the pipe to the garage.

Mixing station is inside the garage so thats why I did this setup.

 

[ReefsandGeeks]

I currently have a set up for AWC using a masterflex pump, and I also don't have the safeguards I should. Instead, I only run the water changes when I am actively around to monitor the tank during a water change. Hasn't had any hiccups after about 100 gallons of changed out water, but unless I have the fail safes, I will not run it without close monitoring.

I did use another masterflex for a different project, and long story short, the outlet hose got clogged, and ruptured the flex tube in the pump head, and leaked 10 gallons of very caustic chemicals into my garage. I got lucky in the way that the leak was slow and didn't spray the stuff everywhere. It just went down the drain. I poured a bunch of neutralizer down the drain and flushed with alot of water. No real damage done, but does remind me of what can happen without proper fail safes. This particular set up was running just fine 24 hours a day for about a week before the clog.

 

[dkeller_nc]

That's a good point. One could, if you choose, run a semi automated water change system with no safeties that allows "no buckets", but also requires you to be around so that you can monitor the progress.

 

[rffanat1c]

True. But the problem with a dos and litermeter is the rate of flow. To change 10% of a 180 would take hours of close monitoring.


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[Tuffloud1]

I've been running the DOS for water changes for 4 1/2 years with no problems whatsoever with the same tubing running 20 feet in my crawl space.

 

[richard_dicosimo]

Through my research I think I'm going to go with a neptune pmup for my waterchange system. It works out to almost the same $ and I think the pmup will handle my volume and noise requirements better

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[ReefsandGeeks]

If you want a fast change, you may be able to do a change with just a pump to move the new water to the tank, and have a special drain plumbed into your sump to send any extra water down the drain. You could put a drain with a ball valve in your sump, sort of like a stand pipe in an over flow. Let the inlet of the pipe be just above the normal sump water level, and put a ball valve on the end and leave it normally closed. When you want to do a water change, simply open the drain ball valve, and turn on your pump to pump new saltwater into the tank. This will raise the water level in the sump, and the extra water will spill over the drain pipe and go down the drain. Then when you're done just turn off the pump, and close the ball valve.

If you wanted to do something like this, you'd have to put a bulkhead in your sump so it could be drained, and have somewhere where it could gravity drain to. If I did this, I'd have the drain go down through the floor and into my basement sink. You'd inevitably drain a small portion of the new water you just added, but if you pump the water into the display, and it is well mixed prior to hitting the sump, than the wasted saltwater would be minimal. The same as doing an automatic water change out. Only becomes significant with very large volume water changes.

Something like this I'd also only run semi-automated, but could be done in a matter of a few minutes instead of hours.

My current water change is 1L/min, so about 15 gallons an hour. I run my water change once a week for 45 minutes to an hour while I perform other aquarium maintenance so I'm near the tank during the change to watch for any issues without just sitting there twiddling my thumbs.