Dez' Tank Journal

[Dez]

Originally Posted by asmodeus

the setup looks great man well done can you explain the water change part thou you just turn on the 75 gal and it will slowly do a water change for ya

Okay Mike,

I'll try to explain it clearly.

1. Get motivated to do water change
2. Turn valve off so the 75 gallon on top is off-line from entire system
2. Drain the top most tank (which is hooked up to my tank at all times running through the same salt water as everything else). To drain it, I just stick a siphon tube on and drain it to the toilet right next door.
3. Turn on pump from 75 gallon reservoir to pump all 75 gallons of fresh RO/DI water to that tank that I just drained.
4. Add salt and magnesium to that water and turn on powerhead to mix
5. Wait a few hours - then test parameters to make sure everything is good (the only parameter that will be off is the temp, my fresh water will be cooler)
6. Turn the valve back on and that freshly mixed water will be part of the system again, I just turn it on very little so the temp doesn't drop fast.

It's only a 75 gallon water change out of 325 gallons (about a 23% water change). Last night I put the freshly mixed salt water back into the system and my temp went from 79.5 degrees to 78.7 degrees overnight. So that's not bad for temp fluctuation. Everything seems to be happy with that new 75 gallons of water last night.

So now water changes will be super easy - no buckets. Just mixing and measuring parameters. This was the part of the whole system that I wanted to be easy was the "regular maintenance - aka water changes" part. I found that in the previous years I just dreaded hauling buckets and buckets of water just to do water changes and I found that I didn't do it frequently enough.

Hope you get it now Mike.