Automated water change system

Post Reply
Francois
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Aug 30, 2011 2:08 am
Location: South Africa

Automated water change system

Post by Francois »

Hi

What is the perfect way to DIY a automated water changing system with your reef angel?
Image
binder
Posts: 2871
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2011 6:20 pm
Location: Illinois
Contact:

Re: Automated water change system

Post by binder »

Depends on how you do your water changes. People have attempted and performed this in the past.
Just a suggestion would be to have a custom menu entry that when selected it would shutoff some ports, then turn on others for a few minutes and then restore normal operation. Or you could shutoff ports and then monitor a float switch just like an ATO system to tell when to restore normal operations.
You would need to be a little more specific for better help.
User avatar
Aquatic Imports
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed May 23, 2012 8:02 am
Contact:

Re: Automated water change system

Post by Aquatic Imports »

I figured out a way thats pretty simple . You would need a shop Vac , one of those 1 gallon vac's from sears , Set up a relay to turn on for 1 min a day if yo wanna do a gallon water change every day or program to what ever days you wanna do a water change.
Ok when the vac is turned on it will only suck out 1 gallon of water out of your sump because the shop vac has a ball float that stops when the water hits the top, At that point no more water will be sucked out of the sump , have pre made water mixed in a bucket/garbage can with a power head and heater higher than the sump , install a 1/8 inch barb hose fitting at the bottom of the can to a mechanical float switch inside the sump, when the water level goes below the float , water from the can will enter the sump till the float switch stops it. Water change done.
Now the shop vac is full with the water from your sump, at the bottom of the shop vac install a 3/8 barb fitting to a nylon hose , have that either going to your Qt tank with another shop vac sucking out 1 gallon of water or have it going to your drain, what happens is when the shop vac turns off the ball float drops and allows the water to drain through the 3/8's hose, when the shop vac is turned on no water is passed through the 3/8 drain fitting because of the suction, only when the ball float drops will the water drain.. Thus allowing the new water to enter your sump via the float switch.and allowing the waste to be disposed into the drain or Qt system..
Make up water now becomes the only issue, If you mount the make up float switch just slightly above the other float switch you will only see a slight difference..

Now there is another way which will require a conductivity controller, and few other fancy features such as a dialysis filter a peristaltic pump a float switch a Rodi, and a drain. Ie The Dialyseas.
Basically you set a timer to suck water out of your sump through the dialysis filter and back via the peristaltic pump which will strip everything out of the water including the salt, when the conductivity drops below its set threshold it will turn on your rodi adding water to the salt bucket, in a slurry the salt water bucket fills up dropping in water from a top spigot into your sump when the desired conductivity is reached the rodi turns off, Now you have a high limit float that turns on and drains the extra water into the drain. Perfect water change while stripping out unwanted contaminates .. All we need is a conductivity controller and $40 dialysis filter a peristaltic pump and a bucket.

John
Post Reply