Genesis Automatic Water Changer is Awesome

[ntropics]

Just wanted to share my experience. I was considering posting this on the vendor section, but I felt more people might see it here. Water changing is a common topic on these discussions, and a pain for many of us.

I thought long and hard about getting the Genesis system. At $600, it's not cheap, perhaps costing more than a lot of members' setups. But I have a 180 with another fifty or so of sump, so I ought to be changing about forty gallons per week. I was lucky if I changed forty gallons in two months. It's a large amount of water, and was a real mess to do, no matter how much I tried to streamline the process.

I currently have the Genesis changing 25 gallons per week, which, although low, is a vast improvement to what I had been doing (only one change since February!), and is probably fine considering that I have only four fish in this tank, an auriga butterfly, majestic angel, and a pair of clown fish. Previously I had more in there, but due to a bad product used in the tank (KO4 minus) I lost half my tank.

Anyway, the Genesis system was easy to set up, although it did require me to do some work on the wall of the house so that I could house the fill tanks and water mixing bin outside (I live in Sacramento, CA so not a major worry of freezing temperatures.) Once I set it up, it took just a bit of fine tuning to get it working. But now it's functioning well.

I would recommend this to anyone who has a large system, and has had trouble keeping up with water changes. I find water changes to be the one aspect of the hobby that has frustrated me the most. Yes, it's expensive, but I if you add up the cost of your livestock, you might find that you've exceeded $600. After my die off, and hair algae attack, I decided that I need to get my tank under control, so that I can enjoy it, rather than consider the work a drudgery. I'll add livestock again, once it's back to its original beauty.

Bruce

 

[Eliphion]

Thank you for the write up. Ill be looking into this since Im in the alpha planning stages of a 600 gallon system. (400 gallon display)

 

[ntropics]

Yes, for that size system, it will make life lots easier. If you want to change just ten percent weekly, you need sixty gallons of water storage. I used fifty five gallon drums, and that works for two weeks worth of changes for me, at 25 gallons per week. You can actually get really large storage tanks and then you'll have to make water a lot less. (My local hydroponic/pothead store has these.) Genesis also makes an automatic top off system. There are issues with these in the situation where the top off keeps on topping off until your house is flooded, but I got a feeling that Genesis has addressed this.

Remember that the system changes one gallon of water per hour, or you can change it to do the whole change all at once (one gallon every two minutes, I think). I like the gallon per hour concept for two reasons. 1) It means that there are no sudden changes in water chemistry. 2) It gives you an opportunity to fine tune your salinity. For instance, if my tank is at 1.22, and I want to raise it to 1.23, I use a slightly higher salinity in the supply bin, say 1.25. Then when the salinity in the tank is where I want it, I just add extra water in the supply bin until it is at 1.23, and I'm in the clear. No fast changes in salinity, and no OMG moments. Of course, you can still do a quick change, if you like.

Bruce