The Automatic Reef

[121]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15457057#post15457057 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ryandlf
If your dosing drip by drip constantly though wouldn't you eventually add way to much water to the system?

You can work out how much you can dose my measuring the amount of evap you get in a day.

I made a quick 'ghetto' doser that I could use awhile I decide which kit to buy.

It's just a length of ridged airline tubing. One end is connected to a 2ml syringe containing filter wool to stop any particles getting into the tube. This is connected to soft airline tubing with an airline clamp to control the drip rate. The end has a 1ml syringe that drips 0.1ml.

I put a 2ltr coke bottle above the sump, then put the end of the tubing through the top of it down to the base and created a back syphon. Can you get more ghetto than that? :lol:

 

[sedor]

To me thats to risky assuming that your conditions are going to be exactly the same every day and you will evaporate the same amount of water every day. IMO your better off just dosing by hand daily until you can get actual dosing pumps and timers. Not to mention, with my ATO I like to set it and forget it.

 

[121]

My evaporation is roughly 2.2ltrs a day. I've been using the 'ghetto' doser for 3 days now and it works perfectly for a temp fix. The drip rate tends to slow down as the bottle runs out though.
When I take it out of a coke bottle (thats 95% empty) and drop it into a full one, it starts dripping straight away at the drip rate I previously set with the air line clamp. Also when I take it out, the water remains in the tube so theres no need to retart the syphon again.

If I put two air lines into two 5 gallon containers it would take care of my top up, alk and calcium for about 2 weeks.

Another method would be to make a shelf behind the tank full of 2ltr bottles containing things like potassium, iodine, trace elements etc.

I'm going to buy the kit to do this but I'll probably try this out first and update (just for fun).

 

[dipan]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15455864#post15455864 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ryandlf
You can't really drip 0.1 ml. He said 1.8 ml a minute, so if you want to dose 10 ml per day you would just set the timer to turn the pump on for 5 minutes and 55 seconds. You can get pretty exact. That is why its good to use a controller as opposed to a cheap timer, because you can go down to the second and control exactly how much you dose.

If you were replying to me, I was replying to the OP who said in the first post that he wanted to be able to dose as little as 0.1mL per day.