This has to be a topic well plowed over, but I looked around and didn't see much, so hopefully somebody can point me to that mother lode of info that must be out there.
My brother has a 180g tank with large cichlids, and assorted others that make up a big biomass. He has a big filtration effort in place, but still needs to perform frequent water changes. What he needs, is an automated water changing system. The good news, he's using well water with close to neutral pH. The bad news, his tank isn't near a water source, he'll have to run a line from the basement up to his living room, where the tank resides. A drain will similarly have to be passed from the tank to the household drainage system.
I've seen setups where there is a siphon/sump/drain setup for the outflow, and a timer that pushes water into the tank at prescribed intervals. He'd probably want to do 10-15% daily. I would think you could also have a "pull" system, whereby water is pumped out at prescribed intervals, and a sensor is triggered which initiates the refill side of the effort. TFH has such a sensor device advertised the past few months.
I'd like to hear from somebody who has installed a system they are happy with, and get some ideas for helping him move forward. Or, as I said before, perhaps this is old ground and somebody could point me in the right direction.
Automated water changes
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Ltrepeter2000
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Tom
You may want to tell your brother to check out these Yahoo groups as I have seen quite a flow of traffic on water changes on their forums.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/buildingfishrooms/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DIY_AQUARIUMS/
Hopefully these can provide you and your brother the information you are looking for.
Rob
You may want to tell your brother to check out these Yahoo groups as I have seen quite a flow of traffic on water changes on their forums.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/buildingfishrooms/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DIY_AQUARIUMS/
Hopefully these can provide you and your brother the information you are looking for.
Rob
Robert Peterson
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The work will wait while you show a child a rainbow,
but the rainbow wont wait while you do the work
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Ghazanfar Ghori
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A drilled tank that 'overflows' to the drain when new water is added is the
most failure-proof method. There are other ways to get automatic water
changes too but this is by far the simplest (read not too many points of failure).
If you don't have a drilled tank, you can use a siphon-maintaining overflow
unit like this one:
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Product/P ... 2004&Nty=1
most failure-proof method. There are other ways to get automatic water
changes too but this is by far the simplest (read not too many points of failure).
If you don't have a drilled tank, you can use a siphon-maintaining overflow
unit like this one:
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Product/P ... 2004&Nty=1
I've done a few automated change tanks, but none in several years. The most successful used the Meridian water changer, but I think that is no longer available.
There are many variant handling processes, but IMHO & IME, none will be satisfactory at any distance from a water source and drain. The biggest hassle for a fully automated system is handling the input water - I used two carbon block filters in series (low flow rate absolutely required to clear chlorine/chloramine, <5 gal per hour on my old setup), solenoids, and constant-level siphons (redundancy is cheap insurance) fed to drain. At low flows you do not need to worry about temperature change in largish tanks, standard heaters will compensate easily.
Back in my mis-spent there was a guy in the MD suburbs whose house was plumbed for drilled tanks - each tank set with through the base standpipes to drain, and side input lines from a tempering/dechlorinating jumbo storage tank in his basement. That was only semi-automated, but the most elaborate setup I've seen. A discus breeder, of course.
Frankly, I'd only suggest such for engineers with too much time on their hands. Yes, you can get really good water quality that way, but the dollar investment is high and the engineering is full of pitfalls. There is little that cannot be accomplished with a Python manually, with a much higher margin of safety.
There are many variant handling processes, but IMHO & IME, none will be satisfactory at any distance from a water source and drain. The biggest hassle for a fully automated system is handling the input water - I used two carbon block filters in series (low flow rate absolutely required to clear chlorine/chloramine, <5 gal per hour on my old setup), solenoids, and constant-level siphons (redundancy is cheap insurance) fed to drain. At low flows you do not need to worry about temperature change in largish tanks, standard heaters will compensate easily.
Back in my mis-spent there was a guy in the MD suburbs whose house was plumbed for drilled tanks - each tank set with through the base standpipes to drain, and side input lines from a tempering/dechlorinating jumbo storage tank in his basement. That was only semi-automated, but the most elaborate setup I've seen. A discus breeder, of course.
Frankly, I'd only suggest such for engineers with too much time on their hands. Yes, you can get really good water quality that way, but the dollar investment is high and the engineering is full of pitfalls. There is little that cannot be accomplished with a Python manually, with a much higher margin of safety.
Where's the fish? Neptune
Since he's on well water, no concern about chloramine removal. The water's a little cool (upper 50's) but as you noted, not really an issue with modest changes.
We are thinking that he could have a "push" system, where a timer allows water to enter a hose daily for say 10-15 minutes, with the overflow being pushed out through a siphon / sump like what Ghazanfar provided a link for above. This would be decidely low tech, just a hose timer from Home Depot hooked up to a spare sink in the basement, with a hose run up through the floor behind the tank.
The drain would drop straight down through the floor to the basement, to an existing floor drain.
One key question concerns the reliability of the siphon / sump. If the siphon were broken, water pushed into the tank would have nowhere to go but trouble.
Alternatively, we could envision a "pull" system, where water is pumped out on timed intervals, triggering a float device to open the spigot for water in.
I hope to make the Dec. 3 meeting at Ghazanfar's, he indicated at the last PVAS meeting that his automated water changes are working great. I'd like to see his setup as well as pick the brains of the learned attendees!
We are thinking that he could have a "push" system, where a timer allows water to enter a hose daily for say 10-15 minutes, with the overflow being pushed out through a siphon / sump like what Ghazanfar provided a link for above. This would be decidely low tech, just a hose timer from Home Depot hooked up to a spare sink in the basement, with a hose run up through the floor behind the tank.
The drain would drop straight down through the floor to the basement, to an existing floor drain.
One key question concerns the reliability of the siphon / sump. If the siphon were broken, water pushed into the tank would have nowhere to go but trouble.
Alternatively, we could envision a "pull" system, where water is pumped out on timed intervals, triggering a float device to open the spigot for water in.
I hope to make the Dec. 3 meeting at Ghazanfar's, he indicated at the last PVAS meeting that his automated water changes are working great. I'd like to see his setup as well as pick the brains of the learned attendees!
