Water changes SUCK. Here's my automated system!

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
dxdx said:
I consider myself lucky to be able to use a gravity based drip system.

Only 3 components:
Water line in, water line out, and a battery powered sensor to detect if the outgoing water line is clogged/frozen that will shut off the incoming water.

I do have a filter on the incoming water line, but just for chlorine, no chloramines in our water fortunately.

As for a non gravity based system, this looks to be about as simply done as possible. It's a great model for people to use if they can't do the gravity based.
Click to expand...

Yup. Gravity drip systems are definitely nice. I had one on my 400g. But that was in the garage. With this tank I set it up as semi-auto until I got fed up of doing water changes. Not anymore!
 
jcardona1 said:
That all depends on how your overflows and returns are designed and positioned. You can see in the pic how high I keep the water level in my sump. I have no issues with water drainage when the pumps turn off. The check valves take care of the returns and my overflow box is built so that it basically drains no water back down when the power goes out.

With regards to chloramine...look at RO/DI systems that reefers use. Chloramines/chlorine filtration is vital for them because these will destroy an RO membrane in no time. There's plenty of cartridges out there using CGAC (catalytic granular activated carbon) that effectively removes all chlorine and chloramines. You can even use a test kit to test for chlorine/chloramines every few weeks.

http://thefilterguys.biz/chloramine_filters.htm
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Lol, who do you think I am? I've spoken to the owner of filter guys several times. Those carbon filters take out the chlorine, you still have ammonia left over. Plus it's much harder to remove the chlorine (whole reason they use chloramine in the first place). If you're pre-mixing like with SW and running RO/DI, that will take care of it, but an automated freshwater system like this is different.


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And with the "holy crap" line, I was referring to if/when a drip system or float valve on a system like this fails... Drip obviously the more likely of the two, from what I've seen.


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aclockworkorange said:
Lol, who do you think I am? I've spoken to the owner of filter guys several times. Those carbon filters take out the chlorine, you still have ammonia left over. Plus it's much harder to remove the chlorine (whole reason they use chloramine in the first place). If you're pre-mixing like with SW and running RO/DI, that will take care of it, but an automated freshwater system like this is different.


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Click to expand...

How is it different? I've spoken to them over the phone as well and he said as long as you stick with slow flow rates (I think he said 15gph?) you'll be fine. The residual ammonia from breaking down chloramines (chlorine+ammonia) bond shouldn't be an issue on an established system with adequate biological filtration. If these carbon filters didn't work there'd be a lot of people out there having problems. I personally don't have chloramines, but I've yet to hear about case where they don't work. If you can provide info that proves otherwise, I'm all ears :)
 
When I talked to him, he said he honestly didn't know. Issues I have seen with people running them in some form in this sort of application is it's a lot harder to break down the chlorine (guys would run a lot of carbon and still get positive readings occasionally), the carbon tends to exhaust faster, and the ammonia is unpredictable... We have pretty inconsistent levels of chloramine being used in our tap, (say the water supply--rainwater collection here mostly--has an algae bloom or whatever). I just don't feel comfortable enough with it personally to trust it long term with MY tap water supply.
I would do what you had before this system with the aging barrel and treat with Prime, but I'm approaching 1000 gallons pretty rapidly here and don't have the space to do so.


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aclockworkorange said:
When I talked to him, he said he honestly didn't know. Issues I have seen with people running them in some form in this sort of application is it's a lot harder to break down the chlorine (guys would run a lot of carbon and still get positive readings occasionally), the carbon tends to exhaust faster, and the ammonia is unpredictable... We have pretty inconsistent levels of chloramine being used in our tap, (say the water supply--rainwater collection here mostly--has an algae bloom or whatever). I just don't feel comfortable enough with it personally to trust it long term with MY tap water supply.
I would do what you had before this system with the aging barrel and treat with Prime, but I'm approaching 1000 gallons pretty rapidly here and don't have the space to do so.


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Click to expand...

If that was the case for me I'd say screw the aging barrel and go straight to an auto-dosing pump like the Chemilizer that Li runs on his tank. Nice way to automate the dosing of Prime.

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i remember seeing another member having a drip system that used a chemical mixer that treated the incoming water with a tank that had a solution of prime/safe/Sodium thiosulphate. that takes care of the carbon filter problem but adds another mechincal component to the system.
 
ahh beat me to it :)

that's baller, cause those things are expensive!!
 
jcardona1 said:
If that was the case for me I'd say screw the aging barrel and go straight to an auto-dosing pump like the Chemilizer that Li runs on his tank. Nice way to automate the dosing of Prime.

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Click to expand...

Yes, I have seen that system too. The other real problem is I have tanks (12 of them?) all around the house (ask someone who has been over recently haha). If I had one big tank (or a few right next to each other) I would consider it for sure. When I move next summer I'm going to really change stuff around and set something up--and hopefully no chloramines.


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