Auto Water Change Idea/suggestions

[noobwithatank]

I am thinking of make an auto water change setup. it would consist of 3 55gallon tanks located on the floor below the tank (crawl space with 5ft headroom). The tank has 3 drains on the side. I would use valves and T into the main drain and plumb it into the waste 55gallon drum. While this is going on I would be pumping the equal amount of new saltwater into the tank via a new return. The only issue I see if finding a return pump that can roughly do 15feet without breaking the bank. More money saved = More coral/fish.. you know the drill.

 

[AdInfinitum]

IMO the very best way to handle water changes if you have the space to do it, is to have a holding tank/drum/aquarium plumbed inline with your system fed by either a branch off your drain or a branch off your return then draining through an overflow into your sump. You must be able to take it offline by shutting off the feed to the tank and have it completely offline indefinitely. At water change time take the tank offline...drain it through a drain valve/line or even a siphon....then at your leisure fill it back up with RO...mix in the salt let it sit for a day or more to get it all mixed and balanced then bring the feed to the holding tank back online and the new water will gradually blend into the system water.

No real work...no hurries or time constraints and as long as the feed to this holding tank is fairly slow, no sudden swings or disruptions to levels even if you don't get the mix perfect.

This was how DarrlyV had his set up on a drain feed the he could simply divert to the sump when it was time to do a change. Having it on a drain let's it serve as a settling area trapping some detritus as well although you must set it up to divert the flow safely so you still have full drain capacity when it is offline.

 

[noobwithatank]

Lets see if I can make this more clear. Here is a very poor photo.. of what I had thought. lol

When it is time for a water change, I can simple close the T on the far left drain. Doing this would divert any extra water entering the system into the waste drum (located In the basement) Next I would turn on the saltwater feed pump also in the basement. and extra water which isn't able to go down the main drain into the sump would then overflow into the waste one. The whole time the sump is active and nothing is turned off/on except for the one pump. Ideas/thoughts?

 

[Nonuser]

No expert. Why not have a t-valve on the return pump in the sump.one way it does its normal job returning water to tank from sump. Other way it's draining the sump down to lowest possible level. Then pump the saltwater mix to fill up the sump.

 

[noobwithatank]

The return section of the sump will not be able to hold roughly 25 gallons.

 

[Joshbrookkate]

No expert here, either, but why not do a continuous auto water change. 2 dosing pumps, one to take out old water and the other to pump in same amount of NSW.
I have this setup using DOS and my Apex. Calculated to take out 1/2 gallon every day. For me that means a 5% water change every week. I plan to up it to 10% in a few weeks.
I would think that any dosing pumps could do the same thing.
Am I right about that? (Again, far from an expert).

 

[noobwithatank]

Sadly space under the stand is going to be rare once everything is in. My only option for that is again the basement. My house is a side split so it's about 15 feet straight up. I just don't want to deal with buckets. Lol