Hi all,
Anyone ever set up an automated system for doing water change (apart from people who live on the coast and can do flow-thru systems like public aquariums)?
I've been pondering about setting up a simple auto-water change system based on a slow SW drip and manual removal of the excess water from the sump weekly or whatever (a sump overflow to drain would be better of course). The big problem is that this screws up top-off, forcing you to measure salinity when you top-off rather than just maintain water level.
So I had the idea of potentially doing something similar to pH monitor-based CO2 injection system, by hooking up a dosing pump to a digital salinity meter (I'm no electronics expert, so have no real idea how to do this). To maintain salinity at the target leve, the pump would dose water, but it would be hooked up to brackish water rather than RO/DI - the equation is something like:
salinity of drip water = target salinity * (1 - e/(e+x)); where e equals %evaporation per day and x equals the target %water change per day. e only needs to be a ball park for you to mix the brackish water; with the salinity meter controlling it, if you overestimated e, x will be higher than you aimed for for a given drip salinity, or vice versa.
Anyway, if you're still with me - ever heard of anyone doing something similar? Does it sound like a stupid idea?
Thanks, Ryan
Anyone ever set up an automated system for doing water change (apart from people who live on the coast and can do flow-thru systems like public aquariums)?
I've been pondering about setting up a simple auto-water change system based on a slow SW drip and manual removal of the excess water from the sump weekly or whatever (a sump overflow to drain would be better of course). The big problem is that this screws up top-off, forcing you to measure salinity when you top-off rather than just maintain water level.
So I had the idea of potentially doing something similar to pH monitor-based CO2 injection system, by hooking up a dosing pump to a digital salinity meter (I'm no electronics expert, so have no real idea how to do this). To maintain salinity at the target leve, the pump would dose water, but it would be hooked up to brackish water rather than RO/DI - the equation is something like:
salinity of drip water = target salinity * (1 - e/(e+x)); where e equals %evaporation per day and x equals the target %water change per day. e only needs to be a ball park for you to mix the brackish water; with the salinity meter controlling it, if you overestimated e, x will be higher than you aimed for for a given drip salinity, or vice versa.
Anyway, if you're still with me - ever heard of anyone doing something similar? Does it sound like a stupid idea?
Thanks, Ryan
