Automatic water change questions

[tonymission]

Finally have my mixing station plumbed to a reservoir (brute can) in my "coral room". Hooked up my Liter meter 3 with water exchange module. About to do the calibration and get it going.

Few questions:

1. Do I need to worry about temperature one way or the other? Have about 200g of water volume and want to change out about 25g per week. Shouldn't make a difference right? I do mix my salt at the correct temp.
2. Do I need a power head in there for aeration for the same reason above? Such a small amount of new water going in at a time. Figured this wasn't a big deal. Only reason I'd be against this is that I'd have to keep lowering the PH as the reservoir is depleted.
3. How do you deal with your ATO? I figured I could program it through my Apex to only turn on for a few minutes every hour. Hopefully those minutes don't cross over when water is being pulled from the sump. Seemed like the easiest solution to me.
4. Anything else I might be missing? Any problems people have ran into in the past?

 

[tonymission]

I should clarify that this won't be a one time 25g water change but continuous throughout the entire week

 

[redstang]

tonymission;1003195 wrote: Finally have my mixing station plumbed to a reservoir (brute can) in my "coral room". Hooked up my Liter meter 3 with water exchange module. About to do the calibration and get it going.

Few questions:

1. Do I need to worry about temperature one way or the other? Have about 200g of water volume and want to change out about 25g per week. Shouldn't make a difference right? I do mix my salt at the correct temp.
2. Do I need a power head in there for aeration for the same reason above? Such a small amount of new water going in at a time. Figured this wasn't a big deal. Only reason I'd be against this is that I'd have to keep lowering the PH as the reservoir is depleted.
3. How do you deal with your ATO? I figured I could program it through my Apex to only turn on for a few minutes every hour. Hopefully those minutes don't cross over when water is being pulled from the sump. Seemed like the easiest solution to me.
4. Anything else I might be missing? Any problems people have ran into in the past?

1. Can't imagine you'd need to worry with such a small percentage of water each day. I'm not planning on worrying about it

2. Call me crazy but I leave a pump in my salt container. When I get another EB8 I'll set it to run for 15 minutes per hour. Aeration is my worry as well and the reason I leave a pump in there.

3. Not sure yet. I'll be using an Apex DOS for my AWC. Cross that bridge when I come to it.

4. I have to wait until Christmas to come across problems...

 

[tonymission]

RedStang;1003209 wrote: 1. Can't imagine you'd need to worry with such a small percentage of water each day. I'm not planning on worrying about it

2. Call me crazy but I leave a pump in my salt container. When I get another EB8 I'll set it to run for 15 minutes per hour. Aeration is my worry as well and the reason I leave a pump in there.

3. Not sure yet. I'll be using an Apex DOS for my AWC. Cross that bridge when I come to it.

4. I have to wait until Christmas to come across problems...

Yeah, I bought this LM3 like 8 months ago and it's been on a shelf unopened this entire time. Apex integration sounds great, but these have great reviews so I'll roll with it. A little disappointed that it doesn't make sense for me to get a DOS but I'm looking for reasons to justify it. :shades:

edit -- I don't think it's crazy to leave a pump on in there, I always did in my mix brute container, but now I'm not going to be changing all I mix. Brett told me to just drop an airstone in the bottom so I dont have to worry about keeping my powerhead on top of the water for surface aeration. I don't want to baby sit it... that's half the reason I'm doing this. That and I'm fricken tired of buckets!

 

[redstang]

tonymission;1003213 wrote: Yeah, I bought this LM3 like 8 months ago and it's been on a shelf unopened this entire time. Apex integration sounds great, but these have great reviews so I'll roll with it. A little disappointed that it doesn't make sense for me to get a DOS but I'm looking for reasons to justify it. :shades:

edit -- I don't think it's crazy to leave a pump on in there, I always did in my mix brute container, but now I'm not going to be changing all I mix. Brett told me to just drop an airstone in the bottom so I dont have to worry about keeping my powerhead on top of the water for surface aeration. I don't want to baby sit it... that's half the reason I'm doing this. That and I'm fricken tired of buckets!

Where there's a will there's a way lol!

LM3's have a great reputation though. No real reason to change.

 

[ghbrewer]

Tony, in regards to the pump running all the time, I was told or read something at one time that certain salts can begin to precipitate when kept mixing for too long. After learning this, I thought back about how I used to leave my SW mixing for days. My container and pump were lined with precipitate. I think using the apex to run the pump for short periods each day is a good idea. In regards to the ATO, you could program the Apex to turn the ATO or LiterMeter off when the other is on.

 

[acroholic]

tonymission;1003195 wrote: Finally have my mixing station plumbed to a reservoir (brute can) in my "coral room". Hooked up my Liter meter 3 with water exchange module. About to do the calibration and get it going.

Few questions:

1. Do I need to worry about temperature one way or the other? Have about 200g of water volume and want to change out about 25g per week. Shouldn't make a difference right? I do mix my salt at the correct temp.
2. Do I need a power head in there for aeration for the same reason above? Such a small amount of new water going in at a time. Figured this wasn't a big deal. Only reason I'd be against this is that I'd have to keep lowering the PH as the reservoir is depleted.
3. How do you deal with your ATO? I figured I could program it through my Apex to only turn on for a few minutes every hour. Hopefully those minutes don't cross over when water is being pulled from the sump. Seemed like the easiest solution to me.
4. Anything else I might be missing? Any problems people have ran into in the past?

1. I don't worry about temperture. I use a 32 gallon Brute filled about once a week with new saltwater as my water change reservoir. I change out 1% of my net volume every day, about 4.6 gallons, over a 45 minute period.
2. I do not circulate the water in my reservoir at all.
3. I program my dual head pump through my ReefKeeper Elite. I have it set up as a timer, and it comes on from 12:00 pm to 12:45 pm once a day. A dual headed pump works very well, because it removes and adds equal volumes of old and new water at the same time, so my sump level never fluctuates. My AW changer pulls old water upstream in the sump (skimmer section), and adds new water downstream in the sump (return section).

 

[morganatlanta]

tonymission;1003195 wrote: Finally have my mixing station plumbed to a reservoir (brute can) in my "coral room". Hooked up my Liter meter 3 with water exchange module. About to do the calibration and get it going.

Few questions:

1. Do I need to worry about temperature one way or the other? Have about 200g of water volume and want to change out about 25g per week. Shouldn't make a difference right? I do mix my salt at the correct temp.
2. Do I need a power head in there for aeration for the same reason above? Such a small amount of new water going in at a time. Figured this wasn't a big deal. Only reason I'd be against this is that I'd have to keep lowering the PH as the reservoir is depleted.
3. How do you deal with your ATO? I figured I could program it through my Apex to only turn on for a few minutes every hour. Hopefully those minutes don't cross over when water is being pulled from the sump. Seemed like the easiest solution to me.
4. Anything else I might be missing? Any problems people have ran into in the past?

1. No
2. I have one in there, but probably don't need it all the time. It's a K8 and has been running pretty much non-stop for 1.5 years with no maintenance. I also figure it helps keep the water from freezing since it is outside. I've got an extra heater I can drop in if it gets really cold also. If it gets really cold my "in" lines freeze so I need to turn off the autochange. Last year I only had two short periods where this was a problem.
3. Don't worry about it. The percentage change per minute is so low that it is insignificant
4. You need to monitor the amount in and out. Even the dual head Masterflex pump I have varies slightly between the in and out because water out wants to siphon where as water in has to be pushed up anywhere from 3 to 7 ft depending on how high the water level is in the reservoir, so the difference even varies based on how full the reservoir is. I put a airline needle valve on the intake of the "out" line and adjust that.

 

[enderg60]

Temp depends on how much water your changing. If your doing less then 2% at a time you wont even see a change.

I used to use parasitical pumps to do 2g changes every day and it worked great. But I decided to up that to 5g a day and those pumps were simply too slow.

Now I use a 10g tank with high and low float switches connected to a relay with 4 pumps connected to my AC3. It basically pumps tank water into the 10g, then pumps that into the drain, then pumps new water into the 10g and then pumps that into the tank. Its been working great for about 2 months now.

The only time I actually heat the water is when I do a large water change while cleaning the fuge or something like that.