For those not using a dosing pump, but otherwise automated dosing thingamajig...

[fishytime]

What are you dosing for your alk?....If its Randy's recipe then, dont bake the baking soda...add it directly to the water and then heat(so the BS disovles completely)....this way wont increase your ph.

[littlesilvermax]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

I know with the Masterflex peristaltic pumps (lab grade, very expensive, although the occasional good deal comes up on ebay .. also LittleSilverMax had at one point, one for sale, if anyone wanted one of these they should send him a PM) can have interchangeable heads to allow for different flowrates which basically involve different sized tubes or different diameters of the rollers). But the speed at which the rollers turn would be the same for each head so it's still not AS independently adjustable from each other that two seperate feed pumps would be.

I still have that pump. I think it is about $800 new. I paid $300 for it, and I will let it go for $150. I kinda forgot about it. It is infinitely variable.

At any rate, you can have more then one head on it.

It doesn't matter if your rates of calcium and alk are different (consumption) because you can just dilute one of the mixtures more.

FWIW, I was (and am still not) a big fan of pumps on timers. I have gone through a good 15-20 timers in my reefing career and they all fail at one time or another. If they fail on, that can be very bad!

[Delphinus]

You don't bake yours? I agree that the baked baking soda is a huge PITA to dissolve. I end up adding the stuff very slowly and sometimes use a blender. I'm using boiled RO/DI at this point too to make sure it dissolves "easier".

So looking at your tank and then looking at mine .. if you're not baking yours then I might just happily skip that step from now on. How much are you heating your baking soda water solution after you've mixed it?

Originally Posted by fishytime

What are you dosing for your alk?....If its Randy's recipe then, dont bake the baking soda...add it directly to the water and then heat(so the BS disovles completely)....this way wont increase your ph.

[Marlin65]

I thought you had to bake it for an hour at 400 so it does not raise the PH?
I have done this but find it still raises my PH
Maybe I should use a different brand other than Arm and hammer.
What do you guys use?

[Delphinus]

Snapped some pictures last night of my setup. As you can see, it's pretty ghetto.

So: Two timers. I have them set to turn on 8 times per day for 2 minutes.


Schedule - Alkalinity
00:00-00:02
03:00-03:02
06:00-06:02
09:00-09:02
12:00-12:02
15:00-15:02
18:00-18:02
21:00-21:02

Schedule - Calcium
01:30-01:32
04:30-04:32
07:30-07:32
10:30-10:32
13:30-13:32
16:30-16:32
19:30-19:32
22:30-22:32

The reason for the plug splitters is that each timer controls two pumps, since I dose into two tanks, it's easier to control the driprate individually if they're on their own pump. For the cost of an Aqualifter (around $10-20 depending on where you shop) this is an easy way to scale upwards. If I really wanted, ie., if the Aqualifter pumps fail, I could just as easily switch these out for say the "Drew's Dosers" at BRS and just adjust the on/off times to longer or shorter if need be. Or I could just get a Profilux doser (I do admit I like them, I just can't afford one right now).

The pumps and jugs:


I never throw anything out so I had lots of these ARM and carbon containers lying around. They are nicely about 1 gallon each and easy to open up and clean and refill. I drilled two holes in each, have rigid airline tubing through those holes so the pumps pick up from the bottom of the container, and then just standard 1/4" tubing the pump intakes and 1/4" tubing that go to their respective tanks.

The irrigation dripvalves:


Pretty ghetto, I just have the tubes dangling over the sump right over the return pumps intake. I test Ca and Alk weekly and adjust the driprates as needed if there is drift in any of the parameters. You can get away with using a single timer if need be, and thus add the Ca and Alk at the same time, but then don't do what you see here (ie., being added to the same location) - put the drippers in different spots so that the additives don't react to each other.

[Skimmerking]

looks good to me Tony clean your Salt Creep lazy bones

[findingnemo1]

Where in calgary sells the aqualiftyer?

[Delphinus]

Big Als for sure. Maybe some other stores too, but I'm not 10)% certain which ones.

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by asmodeus

looks good to me Tony clean your Salt Creep lazy bones

I love it when you talk dirty to me, you big non-salt-creepy kind of guy, you...

[muck]