Who loves AWCs?

[afboundguy]

After a few days of testing I setup my new auto water change system on the Hydros. It was super easy as it's already programmed into the software/system. Added a low sensor after figuring out the level after taking out a gallon and the system uses the ATO as the top sensor!

Plan on doing 1 gallon a day which is the equivalent of roughly 10% weekly water changes. Should make a huge difference since I barely ever do water changes right now!

 

[FishieBusiness]

AWCs have kept me in this hobby. No matter how careful I was I still spilled water. And don't get me started with carrying 5gal. buckets of water through the house.

 

[afboundguy]

AWCs have kept me in this hobby. No matter how careful I was I still spilled water. And don't get me started with carrying 5gal. buckets of water through the house.

I am hoping it at least makes me enjoy the hobby more! Always hated doing water changes which led me to not do them which led to tank not doing as well!

 

[Kymot]

Same here, been doing AWC using DOS for 2 years now, best decision investment. Make the process so much easier. Also think the tank is much more stable with mini WC daily. I do 2 gallon a day for a 150 gal system.
One thing to watch out, one time the input stop filling water due to clogged debries so it’s constantly pulling water out but not filling back. I was abroad too, luckily i have a camera and was able tk shutdown the DOS. The joy of reefing i guess, there’s always something

 

[Kens Bees]

Every other day I have three cycles of about 3 gallons each time. Real fuzzy math comes out to about 30 gallons a week on 150 gallons total system volume. I don’t have a basement sink so there’s no way I could manage six pails of water up and down the stairs every week. I do vacuum as needed though. I also try not to store too much fresh saltwater as I did find out I was dropping alkalinity if I stored for more than a couple weeks. It hasn’t been a real issue since upgrading to the larger tank though!

This is a good calculator for figuring out effective water change volumes, Hamza’s Calculator

 

[afboundguy]

This is a good calculator for figuring out effective water change volumes, Hamza’s Calculator

That's the calculator I used to get my roughly 10% weekly equivalent!

 

[afboundguy]

Same here, been doing AWC using DOS for 2 years now, best decision investment. Make the process so much easier. Also think the tank is much more stable with mini WC daily. I do 2 gallon a day for a 150 gal system.
One thing to watch out, one time the input stop filling water due to clogged debries so it’s constantly pulling water out but not filling back. I was abroad too, luckily i have a camera and was able tk shutdown the DOS. The joy of reefing i guess, there’s always something

I have a 1/2 inch intake pipe coming from my sump and 3/8 inch coming from the SW reservoir to the sump so shouldn't be an issue for me and I have it set to only fun 1-2 minutes after normal time and will get alerted if they run past that time so I should know pretty quickly if anything like that happens!

 

[afboundguy]

Ironically it just finished its first automated/unsupervised AWC a minute ago as I have it set to start at 10pm. I'm in bed but checked the Hydros app and everything looks good level wise.

I do actually think I'll set my iV to test the system right at 10:10 pm so I'll get the most accurate salinity reading right after so I'll be alerted if it goes out of whack.

 

[DatReefGuy]

Not a super huge fan of the manual water changes but would consider awc. Does anyone run a leak detector? Would you run your wastewater inside to sink or out the house? Just curious.

 

[SteveDola]

^^I have sensors outside and inside the 55g barrel, just in case.

I honestly love the AWC method. It might not be the most effective for adjusting nutrients down, but I don't have that issue (the opposite, actually). Im doing a 30-gallon water change right now and it only took me about 10 minutes of setup to dial in the Sg.

Its nice if you have to adjust salt/alk/etc bc its incremental instead of the 1 X amount dumped in the tank. Ill never have a tank again without a AWC.

 

[drsalomon]

Love it for the stability, but with caution. The lines can get fouled, which could lead to a salinity swing. Dont rely on salinity probes in the tank as they are not reliable enough. So yes, they are good as long as you are regularly testing salinity using an accurate method. I use dos pumps to push the water between 2 systems and then to waste. Helpful to have DOS also control ATO so there is a log of how much water is added each day. This gives you a heads-up on AWC line fouling, as you will see perturbations in ATO daily volume.

 

[afboundguy]

Not a super huge fan of the manual water changes but would consider awc. Does anyone run a leak detector? Would you run your wastewater inside to sink or out the house? Just curious.

I plan to add leak detectors around the sump and water mixing station.

Love it for the stability, but with caution. The lines can get fouled, which could lead to a salinity swing. Dont rely on salinity probes in the tank as they are not reliable enough. So yes, they are good as long as you are regularly testing salinity using an accurate method. I use dos pumps to push the water between 2 systems and then to waste. Helpful to have DOS also control ATO so there is a log of how much water is added each day. This gives you a heads-up on AWC line fouling, as you will see perturbations in ATO daily volume.

The Hydros AWC setup also controls the ATO pump which I also enjoy. Makes it easy to see how long the ATO pump, AWC drain and AWC fill pumps run for.

 

[Swordsman82]

After a few days of testing I setup my new auto water change system on the Hydros. It was super easy as it's already programmed into the software/system. Added a low sensor after figuring out the level after taking out a gallon and the system uses the ATO as the top sensor!

Plan on doing 1 gallon a day which is the equivalent of roughly 10% weekly water changes. Should make a huge difference since I barely ever do water changes right

Which Hydros Module are using for the AWC? I was looking at picking up a minnow and trying it with there simple dosing pumps

 

[Cjtabares]

^^I have sensors outside and inside the 55g barrel, just in case.

I honestly love the AWC method. It might not be the most effective for adjusting nutrients down, but I don't have that issue (the opposite, actually). Im doing a 30-gallon water change right now and it only took me about 10 minutes of setup to dial in the Sg.

Its nice if you have to adjust salt/alk/etc bc its incremental instead of the 1 X amount dumped in the tank. Ill never have a tank again without a AWC.

Do you use a dos. I have been thinking of getting one for AWC.

 

[afboundguy]

Which Hydros Module are using for the AWC? I was looking at picking up a minnow and trying it with there simple dosing pumps

The minnow would take forever to do a gallon WC and I had thought of using that but I saw a ton of people bought this pump (https://a.co/d/06qoYyEj) that is around 460ml/min and I ended up finding an even faster one (1340ml/min) for the pumps. Other than that you need 2 level sensors (can use current ATO one).

Or you could calibrate the dosing pumps to dose specific amounts of water but I didn't like that option compared to having a high and low sensor as I feel there are more safeguards that way as I also set max time the pumps can be on in case the water sensors fail. I also created a combiner that shuts off the AWC and other items if the last ditch effort emergency float switch gets triggered and I actually plan to add a second float switch for even more redundancy!