Automatic waterchange with top off design - please gimme some feedback

[amoreira]

Looks like a good setup. A couple of comments I have... You'll need a circulation pump and a heater in the salt-water make-up tank to mix the RODI water with the salt and heat it to the desired temperature.

If you want to go to the nth degree, you could have another hopper with salt mix with a load cell on the make-up tank. You could automate adding the salt mix, the water and the mixing. Unfortunately, Apex controllers don't take generic 4-20 mA analog signal inputs or outputs. For this sort of thing you'd have to buy a separate PLC (programmable logic controller).

I was thinking of automating this water change. But as others have mentioned, I use water change time to clean the DT of hair algae, cyano and detretius. Except for scraping algae, this is the only thing I don't have automated in my tank (Auto-feeders, ATOF, Ca Reactor, Light timers, etc.. make life easier).

[dsaundry]

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 Good idea. Only hassle I think you will face until you get it totally figured out is salinity. 


+1

[shrimpchips]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but I'd have a reservoir for the RODI line instead of plumbing it directly into your tank. In the unlikely (just like every other disaster preceeding event that seems to happen just a tad too often in this hobby) event that the solenoid fails, it won't flood your system - it just floods a reservoir that could have a built in overflow system. It would involve one extra pump, but that could be the pump that saves your house from becoming a mess, and saving your tank from a crush inducing salinity swing.