Adding a large volume of water

[grendel]

Ok, I am getting ready to bring on a super sump (300g) and a fuge (100g) to my 90G display. What's the best way to do this?

I am getting ready to do a HUGE water change

Quite frankly, the tank's going well, but I hate messing with the chemistry.

In a month or two I will have 1000g of NSW but I want to bring at least the fuge online this week.

 

[ScooterNH]

I'm new so take this with a grain of salt.

I'd probably get the Supersump and Fuge filled and operating with as close a match as possible for parameters, then just start doing "water swaps" for a week or so before putting them all in line together.

I had my new 90 and my old 55 (which was stocked), and combined them to use the 55 as a sump/fuge this way. Every morning I just filled 2 5gal buckets and swapped the water between the two tanks. That way any imbalances were small and equalled out after a while. When I finally moved the 55 under the 90 and put it in-line I did a 10%ish water change.

Hope that helps

 

[witchdoctor]

I'd go ahead and plumb everything together, but have a closed loop or submersible pump in the fuge and sump. Each day, run the pumps between the main, fuge, and sump for a few minutes to do a little mixing. The rest of the time, keep the valves closed to keep the volume separated. Each day, open up the valve, and run the pump a little longer. Pretty soon, all of the volume is essentially mixed. Just make sure you have some sort of circulation in the the sump and fuge when the connecting pump isn't running.

 

[~Flighty~]

The way I did it was to get the large volume up and running and as matched as possible (ca, mg, alc, salinity, temp) then tied a section of airline tubing to the output of a powerhead and ran that to the sump. My sump is constant level and flows down to the 425 when it is full. That way it was a constant drip water change that I just left running for a week. After that I bumped it up to the full powerhead strength for a few days before turning on the real pump.

Another thing I did was to add an big clump of macro to the 425 just to seed some life in there.