Water changing station

[theyangman]

So as I progress into the hobby further, I am now realizing the enormous PITA water changes are with reef tanks. Prepping my water change water a night in advance takes much more effort that I had originally planned and I do not want to continue this route.

So I ask any of you who potentially have created automatic water changing stations/setups or even anything in general that can alleviate the task that is changing water.

Currently I mix my water and salt the night before in two 16 gallon rubber maid containers, let it sit for approx 24 hours, check parameters, if they are ok, I siphon out my sump (40 gallon long, which has about 25-30 gallons of water in it (I have never actually checked exactly how much water is in there, I just have enough to make sure my skimmer doesn't gurgle and make the waterfall noise))

then I have the awkward task of trying to add the clean water back into the sump. I do this all currently without any additional pumps. So I am doing this by gravity feed which is a pain in the ass and without a large mixing station. I live in a Condo with little to no extra room to spare, except in our laundry room which happens to be somewhat close to the tank luckily. I have not setup my RO/DI unit (yes yes shame on me, it has been sitting in its box for 3 months still) I have gotten the tank up and running off treating tap water but I want to make the full switch ASAP before issues arise. I have a Spectrapure 90 GPD RO/DI unit.

So here is my initial plan,

I run the RO/DI unit in the laundry room and have it collecting in say a 55 gallon blue drum or even a pair of them perhaps, I plum the drums direct to the sump, with the appropriate pump inline, with some valves so after I am done siphoning, out the water, I can just turn the pump on, open some valves, and presto chango, the water change is done. The water will be monitored in the laundry room to make sure the specs are all good before entering the display tank, and I will no longer have to worry about lugging water around all the time to make things work?

Any suggestions or links to peoples systems would be amazing!

 

[Giglio324]

I do almost the same thing. Difference is where I make my new saltwater is only like 20 ft away from my sump. So I just have a small mj1200 pump with 1/2 flex tubing and I no longer have to so anything except run the hose and plug the pump in. To get the water out of the sump when I do this I just unhook one of my reactor pumps and let that fill pails. Good look. Post some pics, we love pictures

 

[Salty Cracker]

3 things, and I'm not being a jerk:

1) Reef keeping takes a lot of work, there's no way around that, no matter how much you automate things.  It's best to just get into the habit of scheduling things just like you schedule any other task...

2) Get your RO/DI set up.  Again, being lazy will lead to disappointment as all the heavy metals and crap that is in London water starts to accumulate in the tank and rock.  Sooner or later you'll have a crash, and it will be devastating and expensive.  I know, I've had 2 on london water.

3) Get a small pump with some hose as suggested.  I dump the whole thing into the mixing tub (bucket etc) the night before and turn it on.  that mixes everything really well.  Check salinity the next day, and use the same pump to pump it into your sump.  Lowes has bulk tubing. 

Get cracking!

 

[msteane]

I'm pretty much the same except I use 5 gallon buckets because they are easier for me to lug from the laundry room to the tank.  Mix the RODI water and salt in the bucket using a maxijet pump.  Lug the full buckets plus a couple empty ones over to the tank.  Turn the return pump off and drain the required amount of water from the display tank (since I just do this with a gravity siphon, the sump is too low to get the water from there).  Then I have a spare mag pump with tubing that I put into the sump.  Turn the tank's return pump back on and the turn the spare mag pump on to get water from the buckets to the sump.

 

[Poseidon]

i use a 40ft hose and a mag 7 pump, 2 barrels plumbed right from my rodi with float valves, big mixing pump in one barrel.

my schedule,
turn on the rodi, dump salt into barrel #1, ( barrel #2 is for top of water)
when its water change time, dump my mag7 into my fragtank and pump 40g into the drain,
then put the mag7 in the reef, pump 40g from there into my frag tank,
then put the mag 7 in barrel #1 with the premixed saltwater and pump into my reef...
no heavy lugging, no spills, no head aches... takes me max 25 min to do a 40g water change

 

[theyangman]

3 things, and I'm not being a jerk:

1) Reef keeping takes a lot of work, there's no way around that, no matter how much you automate things.  It's best to just get into the habit of scheduling things just like you schedule any other task...

2) Get your RO/DI set up.  Again, being lazy will lead to disappointment as all the heavy metals and crap that is in London water starts to accumulate in the tank and rock.  Sooner or later you'll have a crash, and it will be devastating and expensive.  I know, I've had 2 on london water.

3) Get a small pump with some hose as suggested.  I dump the whole thing into the mixing tub (bucket etc) the night before and turn it on.  that mixes everything really well.  Check salinity the next day, and use the same pump to pump it into your sump.  Lowes has bulk tubing. 

Get cracking!

1. Yes, I get this, I am not looking for a turn key operation here, but a little planning can save me loads of work down the road. I don't see why trying to be more efficient would be a downfall?

2. This is the exact point of my post... I want to get it all running before it is too late.

3. This is sorta how I do it now. I just want something less of an eyesore around the condo. I have limited space and having two enormous buckets of salt water sitting in my living room with two powerheads whirling away for 24 hours can be somewhat annoying. Especially once a week. That is why I want to concentrate as much of it as possible to the laundry room.

 

[curiousphil]

3 things, and I'm not being a jerk:

1) Reef keeping takes a lot of work, there's no way around that, no matter how much you automate things.  It's best to just get into the habit of scheduling things just like you schedule any other task...

2) Get your RO/DI set up.  Again, being lazy will lead to disappointment as all the heavy metals and crap that is in London water starts to accumulate in the tank and rock.  Sooner or later you'll have a crash, and it will be devastating and expensive.  I know, I've had 2 on london water.

3) Get a small pump with some hose as suggested.  I dump the whole thing into the mixing tub (bucket etc) the night before and turn it on.  that mixes everything really well.  Check salinity the next day, and use the same pump to pump it into your sump.  Lowes has bulk tubing. 

Get cracking!

If you don't mind me asking... how long did each of your two tanks last before crashing?

 

[theyangman]

My guess would be within the first year? Depending on the size of the tanks

 

[Salty Cracker]

[quote author=Salty Cracker link=topic=5535.msg52807#msg52807 date=1370445299]
3 things, and I'm not being a jerk:

1) Reef keeping takes a lot of work, there's no way around that, no matter how much you automate things.  It's best to just get into the habit of scheduling things just like you schedule any other task...

2) Get your RO/DI set up.  Again, being lazy will lead to disappointment as all the heavy metals and crap that is in London water starts to accumulate in the tank and rock.  Sooner or later you'll have a crash, and it will be devastating and expensive.  I know, I've had 2 on london water.

3) Get a small pump with some hose as suggested.  I dump the whole thing into the mixing tub (bucket etc) the night before and turn it on.  that mixes everything really well.  Check salinity the next day, and use the same pump to pump it into your sump.  Lowes has bulk tubing. 

Get cracking!

If you don't mind me asking... how long did each of your two tanks last before crashing?
[/quote]

4-5 years oddly enough.  London water has no chloramines or phosphates to speak of, so the trace amounts of all the other junk takes time to build up. (I seriously now view putting tap water into my tank like pouring paint thinner into it)  Mushrooms, leathers and whatnot did great, then the BOOM got lowered.  In fact, I've had 3 crashes, almost all 5 years in, the last I actually brought the tank back to life with MASSIVE RO/DIwater changes and non stop hi-cap GFO use.  Took FOREVER to get it to stop leeching out of the rocks.

 

[Salty Cracker]

In fact, here's the trap... you use tap water and well everything looks good, everything is growing fine, so why spend the money on an RO/DI setup?  Check out this pic of my tank when it was about 4 years old.  That leather is 1/4 the size of a 6 foot tank, the frogspawn was going crazy, as were the candycane on the left, the mushrooms and pallys.  I had a shrimp in there and even a clam for a few years.  Like I said, then the BOOM comes.  Note that I had hardly any good corraline growth, and the tank looks like a freshwater tank almost.  I had 2x250 MH running on there.  Sooner or later, it's going to hit.  Rocks and substrate hit capacity for 'crap' and then the only place for all that stuff to go is ONTO the rocks, and that's when the bad stuff takes over. 

 

[Giglio324]

You have a 220 gallon tank in a condo. Wow that must be quite the centre piece, if it were me, I would use another tank to mix the water and put it in a closet(space permitting) this way you can mix your water and then when water change time comes. You can probaly pump out right to the sink and then with the same hose and a quick flush right back in the sump. I'm sure I there are different space restrictions in what I said but I do understand your issue now. And just saying I don't do a WC every week. Every 2 weeks typically.

 

[TORX]

I am sorry, why do you need a water change station...who does water changes?  :?

 

[theyangman]

You have a 220 gallon tank in a condo. Wow that must be quite the centre piece, if it were me, I would use another tank to mix the water and put it in a closet(space permitting) this way you can mix your water and then when water change time comes. You can probaly pump out right to the sink and then with the same hose and a quick flush right back in the sump. I'm sure I there are different space restrictions in what I said but I do understand your issue now. And just saying I don't do a WC every week. Every 2 weeks typically.

The space restrictions is the hardest work around here. The most flexibility is the laundry room which is only about 15 feet away from the display tank I want to use that room as the mixing station and keep spare water for top offs, the next step would be to incorporate an ATO system as well.

I am sorry, why do you need a water change station...who does water changes?  :?

Huh?

 

[curiousphil]

i think that was a joke lol

 

[TORX]

LOL.

Sent from my SGH-T989D using Tapatalk 2

 

[Boga]

1. Get the biggest pump that you can afford/fit for transferring water from drums to the sump. Use appropriate hose size for the flow. Will save you time.
2. Add ATO for collected water.
3. Adding a heater may help, too.
4. In my view siphoning water from the sump is not the best. Blow off detritus from the rocks first, and get as much detritus as you can from DT during the mini storm created. Try to vacuum from the bottom, but not disturbing the substrate too much. Once in a while you can clean up the sump. I am new on this hobby, so please do not quote me too much on this practice. Maybe more experienced folks can comment.
5. Also create your own salt quantity reference. For X gallons of water you need Y amount of salt. In long time you will notice that the salinity would be about the same for each batch.
6. Some people would add an aerator.
7. You said blue drums? Check if they safe for use. Some of them may leach various components into RO/DI or saltwater.
8. Build an ATO for your system if you do not have one already. This was one of my best improvements.
9. If I would be you, and time is a constraint, I would skip one water change and get the RO/DI in place. Your tank will “thank you”.

 

[Petercar (RIP Dec 2017)]

I live on a 10th floor apt.  ..65 gallon tank 30 gallon sump. ...got a12 gallon food grade garbage bin on wheels and a aqualife rodi .i do the make up water in the bathroom.  I put the bin in the showerstall.  Put the rodi on the floor. Hook it up to the shower massage hose and full that bin up and 2 - 5 gallon culligan water jugs.  Dump my salt in the bin as its fulling throw a powerhead in ..when its all done wheel the bin down the hall to the closet and the one 5 gallon will go in closet to and one goes under tank in stand and throw my tunze ATO in ..then unhook the rodi and wipe the hoses all off and the go in a bench down the hall...in 24 hrs i do waterchange.  ..check the salinty while i take 10 gals water out of sump with a small pump into a 5 gal pail dump it in the shower and full again. Then wheel the bin in front of tank and pull pump outta sump throw into bin and full the sump  till full. The dump the rest of new water mixed into shower and wash all pials out with shower head let dry and wipe dry put all away .. opcorn:

 

[Reef Hero]

Reefin ain't easy....

 

[theyangman]

Anyone know where I can get water holding tanks like this:

Preferably local, I know I can order these online but the size I am looking for will be pretty large and shipping would crush me. Also I would ideally get square ones, not round as I would need to plumb them for my system, Looking for two of the same item. Capacity of 50+ Gallons or so. (not sure of the standardized sizes that these may come in)

 

[TORX]

Farm supply stores normally have them. I know that Kent Farms has them where I am. I have yet to buy one though.

As for my water changes, I have a manifold on my return pump that I open and poor directly into a 5 gal pail, then put my fresh mixed water on a chair and siphon it into the sumps first chamber to mix well as it flows through the sump before hitting the display, also, it is so deep that it does not disturb the detritus.

I do 5 gal twice a week on my 120.  :? Should be doing more I think. Maybe when I get a new station set up. Damn summer projects are falling behind already.