This build is amazing, I really enjoy all the diy, I am starting a remodel/tank build soon but on a much smaller scale.
When I came onto the scene around 2002, the consensus was that in order to have success, you had to have a large tank. With all the advances made in the hobby, we can now successfully maintain a healthy, stable environment in a 10 gallon tank. Perhaps in the future we will have happy tangs living in a 5 gallon nano... eh, probably not..
I feel that an update is over due. Having been stalled out due to bad experience with QT and possibly the heat playing a big role in that. The plan to have my local LFS purchase and QT my fish for me has fallen flat on its face. I purchased fish and they seem to be on back order or when they get them in they sell them to someone else before the full QT process. It's been over 4 months, I guess I need to get my money back.
Good news is that I'm going ahead with doing it myself, I purchased a few fish from live aquaria (copperband, diamond goby and a mandarin) and they've been in the QT for almost 2 weeks now. The copperband showed signs of ich so I had to dose some copper into the tank, the waiting game is on. All of the fish are eating frozen food which is a relief.
I've been slowly accumulating the necessary components to get my automatic waterchange system up and running. I decided to use the Apex to control it.
The idea that I have is to somewhat mimic the genesis awc system. 2 identical reservoirs with 3 float switches in each. One to indicate that the reservoir is empty and two more wired together (for redundancy) to indicate that it's full (Don't want to have them overflowing). A scheduled event programmed into the Apex will call for 2 pmup to start filling the reservoirs with NSW and old salt water. Once they're both full then 2 solenoids are energized to allow water to be gravity fed to the tank and the other down the drain respectively. And if for some reason something doesn't work properly ie the float switches report that the reservoirs aren't being filled or emptied then it will shut down operation and send me a text message.
In order to use the Apex I need a break out box (BoB) for the multiple float switches and because I already have a BoB for normal tank operations I needed a PM2 module in order to expand the extra IO's. The PM2 also allows me to add a second salinity and temperature probe to the new salt water container. at the moment I have the stainless steel solenoids, float switches, PM2 and break out box. I will have the pmup's on Friday.
Since the waterchange is going to be automated I'm also going to need to know when the salt water mixing barrel is getting low. I will need a float switch on the bottom of the barrel and while I'm at it, I want to add a float switch on the top side as well. I'm always afraid that when I pump RODI water in the salt water barrel that I will get distracted with something else and then have it overflow.
While waiting on the pmup's (btw because they're "pump" spelled backwards if you make it plural, do you spell it "spmup"?) I decided to design and cut out all the float switch holders out of acrylic.
This is the one for the salt water barrel:
I cut it so that I can fine tune the lower float switch by sliding the bottom up and down and secured with these nylon thumbscrews.
I hate having to drill holes in these barrels so I thought that I could hang the holder off of the plumbing.
These 2 halves come together around the pipe and then held together with o-rings.
And installed:
It fits snugly, the only thing that I should have done was add a spot to hold the temperature and salinity probe. So it will have to come back out and another piece of acrylic added.
