Auto Water Change ideas???

[lobsterboy]

did anyone check out superduper wesman;s nano, i think there is a video of a instant water change there somewhere, or maybe it was just draining the water, none the less is was really cool not to meantion the stand and the whole thing is pretty awseome

[scuglass]

ill look for it... its super old.

[es355lucille]

I am going to hangout on this thread. T

his is something I have been thinking about. I just want to have it automated enough that I just have to flip a switch to remove water and one to pump in the new sw.

To do this fully automated would take some good reliable hardware.

[Myka]

One of the drawbacks I see to an auto waterchanger is that you don't get to siphon out detritus. I find this implemental in the health of my reef, but I do have lower flow because of my LPS so maybe you guys with high flow SPS tanks don't get detritus settling anywhere?

[msobon]

Well it's a interesting question but really it depends on how complicated and how automated do you want to go and what type of a water change process you want to do.

First of ideally water changes IMO should be done with introducing the new water slowly instead of just draining "X" amount and pouring in "X" amount of water mixed with exact to similar salinity/temp.

Ever do a water change without any corals reacting to it? Usually you wont get it perfect dead on and you will get a reaction to diff water paremeters, basically a very quick change paramaters and a natural way of adjusting to that change by the corals, which can be stressfull to the inhabitants.

Ideally I would say you would have another tank by your sump which would be attached to your sump via valves usually a "IN" and an "OUT" to the sump plus a "Drain", the drain would be used to empty out the waste water.
You would add a float switchthat would take care of the fresh water feed, solenoid or mechanical (either one does the job). Solenoid would be hooked up to the RO/DI filter(assuming that what you use).
This would fill the tank to a desired level you would probably want to have it match the level in the sump.

So at the moment you have a tank that auto fills, is sepearated by valves to the sump, what else do you need?
Since the tank is a seperate unit, a heater and a water motion device would be needed to mix the salt.
Once those two things are in place you would be able to add the salt, let it mix and heat up to a preset temp and salinity would still have to be measured manually.

Once this is ready, you would open the "IN" and "OUT" valves that would be attched to your sump and let the water pasively exchange, this could be done over a few days so basically that water would become part of the water volume in the tank. Once this has taken place you would close the valves for "IN" and "OUT" and Open the "Drain" valve whch would be hooked up to your drain letting the water empty. You would close th valve and let the RO/DI will the tank with water again.

Now this change system would still require you to turn some valves and throw some salt in, but in a more controlled and less messy way! No hoses, no buckets, unfortuanatly not fully automated! :P

I think the biggest pain for a water change is the carrying water/ pulling hoses etc.

Turning a few valves and mixing salt isn't that bad.

[michika]

I have plans to encorporate one into my new system, so I'm tagging along.

Tentatively we've planned to do ours with solonoids, and controlled either by our RKE or by a separate system.

[banditpowdercoat]

I am trying to invent a good way to automatically keep the Sg in the tank at a stable level. The Auto change would be easy if there was a reliable way to add salt to the tank. Like stated, just drain some, add RO water and then the proper amount of salt.

Presently, Electronic Sg meters are to expensive for my plans.

[sphelps]

If you're going to do something like this keep it simple. It's not hard to set something up where all you have to do is add a consistent amount of salt on a weekly bases and monitor salinity on a monthly bases. If you can't do that then I'm not sure what to say, after all you still gotta clean the glass right?

If you get into complicated systems with multiple pumps, solenoid valves, float switches, and timers or even hoppers you're not only introducing multiple sources of error but multiple sources of failure which is something you want to avoid.

[banditpowdercoat]

Originally Posted by sphelps

If you're going to do something like this keep it simple. It's not hard to set something up where all you have to do is add a consistent amount of salt on a weekly bases and monitor salinity on a monthly bases. If you can't do that then I'm not sure what to say, after all you still gotta clean the glass right?

If you get into complicated systems with multiple pumps, solenoid valves, float switches, and timers or even hoppers you're not only introducing multiple sources of error but multiple sources of failure which is something you want to avoid.

I need to set my tank up for 3 week sustainability. Sometimes cant trust the hired caretakers

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by banditpowdercoat

I need to set my tank up for 3 week sustainability. Sometimes cant trust the hired caretakers

So do a water change every three weeks. I have a system setup on my tank similar to what I described earlier but I have to manually activate the pump, this way I can do it whenever I'm available. Takes about 2 minutes to change 10 gallons and I don't have to have premixed water ready prior to this. Best of all the hole system is just a pump on a switch and bucket of salt with a cup