Vacation Top Off

[GRREEF]

I'm headed on vacation for a week. Usally I have a neighbor's son top my tank every day with RO/DI and feed the fish.

This isn't too good since the gallon+ of RO/DI a day isn't buffered. Anyone have a recipe for buffering the RO/DI, perhaps with a small amount of CaCl and Baking soda?

I can just leave 10 gallon jugs pre-buffered for him to use as top off.

Or is this a bad idea?

 

[wrott]

I would never buffer top off water. You are just replacing evaporated water---just drip in ro/di water from a 5g reservoir--it should last 5 days at least.

 

[GRREEF]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6599259#post6599259 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by wrott
I would never buffer top off water. You are just replacing evaporated water---just drip in ro/di water from a 5g reservoir--it should last 5 days at least.

Well I'll be gone 7, so that wont work. I will not be adding kalk at this time, so if I don't buffer, ph and alk will drop.

 

[jrw]

I've let my 90 gal go 5 days without top off or food and everything did fine. The only real problem would be if your sump would get so low to dry run the pumps and that would be bad. Can't imagine a couple of days making a big difference though. If you were really concerned you could do as "wrott" suggested with a larger container.

 

[scunan]

Re: Vacation Top Off

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6599045#post6599045 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by GRREEF
I'm headed on vacation for a week. Usally I have a neighbor's son top my tank every day with RO/DI and feed the fish.

This isn't too good since the gallon+ of RO/DI a day isn't buffered. Anyone have a recipe for buffering the RO/DI, perhaps with a small amount of CaCl and Baking soda?

I can just leave 10 gallon jugs pre-buffered for him to use as top off.

Or is this a bad idea?

If you normally buffer your rodi top off water, I would definately leave 10 gallon jugs of pre-buffered for him to use as top off.

 

[phishlet]

My 125 evaporates about a gallon a day too. I use one of these http://www.autotopoff.com/products/DS1/index.htm in a 20 gallon container of RO/DI with a Maxijet 900 to pump water back to the sump of my reef. It's doesn't pump a gallon at a time so I don't worry about any buffer in the container.