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Continuos wc instead of dosing?

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Zack801 View Drop Down
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    Posted: April 21 2017 at 7:06pm
So I've been thinking of trying this but wanted some other opinions. I've got a frag tank 65g total. Mostly zoas but have a few sps as well so haven't had to dose anything yet. Weekly water changes have kept alk, calcium in a good spot. I picked up the apex dos system and was thinking of setting it up to do my weekly 10g change but do about 1.5g a day instead of the 10g at once. Could I get away with this if I started adding more sps? I know there are a ton of variables but has anyone tried anything like this? Small daily wc and not really dosing. I will of course keep testing and seeing where things are at. I'm mostly intimidated with trying to figure out dosing requirements if I just set this up as a doser and do wc manually. Any input is greatly appreciated

Edited by Zack801 - April 21 2017 at 7:07pm
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Adam Blundell View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Adam Blundell Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 21 2017 at 8:42pm
It's totally doable.  Not many do it, but you certainly can.  
I've only done this for brief systems.  I measured by water out (measured by volume in waste container) and countered with volume in reservoir.  I haven't measured by flow in and flow out rates (except while doing large water changes).  In the freshwater world, this is fantastic.  I've done that a few times, and plan to on my next tank.

Dave here was telling me recently about this continuous water change system.  Instead of measuring water out and matching to water in, he measures salinity to know how much to add.  I'm sure he'll chime in.

Adam
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xheliBIGZ View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote xheliBIGZ Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 21 2017 at 10:12pm
It would work but at what cost? You'd be dosing, kind of, doing the water change. Price of salt, plus your time. I have an 80 gallon mixed shallow reef and I spend $40 every 5 months in dosing products from BRS. A 175 gallon bucket of Red Sea Coral Pro cost $65 ish. A gallon and a half a day, forty two ish gallons a month, approximately 4 months to use up the 175 gallon bucket.

Same bucket with 5 gallon wc per week lasts about 8 months. $65

Cost of two buckets of Red Sea Coral Pro for 8 months is $130 if doing the daily change (figured off 1 1/2 gallons per day).

I think cost wise pretty similar when adding price for dosing product.

I guess if both methods were automated it's 50/50. I always seem to lose a lot of magnesium on a 5 gallon weekly wc depending on the salt I use so you may have to still dose a little with the 1 1/2 daily changes.

If you are planning on siphoning out water by hand and replacing it daily I'd say just auto some dosing pumps, mix up some two part and enjoy the extra time!

I also run kalkwasser so I barely have to dose alk and calc.




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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote keithro Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 22 2017 at 11:46am
you can do the dosing and the water change with one DOS unit using solenoids and/or check valves since the head is reversible.  

https://forum.neptunesystems.com/showthread.php?15158-Make-your-DOS-a-4-head-pump-from-2-and-save&p=99582&styleid=2
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HumuHumuForever View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote HumuHumuForever Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 23 2017 at 1:17am
I run a continuous water change but it's nowhere near enough to keep my water parameters up where they need to be on its own.  I still have to dose Alk, Ca & Mg continuously to keep those parameters stable.

Ultimately though whether or not it will work for you depends on the demands of your system.  For the first 4 months or so I didn't need to dose anything additional, the water change alone was enough, but as I added more corals and the corals grew bigger demand skyrocketed and I had to start dosing.  I really do like the combination of the two to keep everything stable and low maintenance on my system.

As Adam mentioned, my system is setup a little differently.  You can run a continuous water change where the amount taken out is exactly the same as the amount put in but you'll have to make sure that all pumps are calibrated correctly and for good measure you should regularly test that calibration.  If not you'll end up with an imbalance which will eventually throw your salinity out of whack as you top off more or less than needed depending on the discrepancy between the pumps.  The DOS system has a very easy way to run the calibrations and adjusts accordingly, it's really slick.  I chose not to go with the DOS only because of the noise level on those pumps, they are crazy noisy and depending on the volume of your water changes they could be running quite frequently. 

I have my water change running every hour and change about 4 gallons a day.  I've also integrated my auto-top off into my water change system so I'm constantly taking a measured amount of water out and then use the salinity probe on my Apex to determine if I need to add more freshwater or saltwater.  And the amount I add is based on a series of float switches.  I still manually check my salinity every week and do regular maintenance checks on the float switches to make sure everything is solid.  Ultimately I exchanged maintenance and calibration on the pumps for maintenance and calibration on my float switches and probes.  I think it just depends on how you want to run it and what type of maintenance you prefer (and will keep up with).

-Dave

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Mark Peterson View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Mark Peterson Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 30 2017 at 7:29pm
This thread caught my eye. An old, retired home based coral farmer, I started selling coral for profit in 1996. Over the years, I occasionally re-evaluated how to ensure the fastest growth and profit for the least amount of maintenance and lowest cost. If that describes anything like what you are thinking, I will attempt to describe my routine below. If this is more than you were looking for, at least it may give you some ideas and/or a different perspective.

Testing
Alk and Ca - approximately weekly
Mg - approximately monthly
PO4 - about every two months until I figured out how to judge PO4 level by viewing the color saturation in the Activated Alumina(AA) granules used to remove PO4 (AA is easier and cheaper than GFO)

Dosing
- Alk, Ca and Mg were dosed as test results indicated. In my last and best coral farm(300 gal total), about half the coral was stony coral and it grew very fast. There was also a lot of Coralline Algae growth. I was going through almost 2 liters of homemade Alk (baking soda and baked baking soda) and about 1 liter of Calcium (CaCl2 ice melt) weekly. The system used almost twice as much Alk as Calcium. I believe this was due to the use of a special substrate which provided high Ca as it dissolved.
- Trace elements were dosed with tablespoonfuls of Kent Coral-Vite alternating with Kent Essential Elements almost weekly. Also added Iodine from time to time.

Since I was working in or at least checking on my farm every day, I chose to stick to mostly manual dosing about twice weekly though at one point I set up automatic dosing of Alk. I found early on that in a heavily populated farm, water changes could never keep up with demand for Alk and Ca. I also found that by dosing the main three components along with the most consumed trace elements, water changes were practically unnecessary. (There are excellent experienced hobbyists in this group that do water changes once or twice yearly, and, they never speak up here on the forum, possibly for fear of reprisal by over zealous, less experienced hobbyists.)

I came to understand that the main component in salt water is sodium chloride(salt), with Alkalinity(though actually not an element), Calcium and Magnesium following in that order. Since salt never evaporates and is never used up, it seemed logical to leave salt alone and instead focus on making sure the components and elements down the line from salt were kept at proper levels. This could only be accomplished by testing and dosing. 

I found that after all costs were tabulated, using just salt water was way too expensive. The combined cost of Test Kits, Baking Soda(Alk), Ice Melt(Ca), Epsom Salt(Mg), Kalkwasser(if used), and Kent trace element products was much, much less than if I tried to feed those things to the system via new salt water. In fact, the only way that exchanging salt water could keep up with demand was to do approximately 10% daily water changes. Whether continuous feed or batch exchanged, this was just too much effort and too prohibitive cost-wise.

Something I never did use in my coral farming was a Calcium Reactor, though it would have been my next step on the 300 gal farm which I had to shut down prematurely after 3 years due to family concerns. I had set up Calcium Reactors for many clients. I probably never bothered because I liked keeping my finger on the pulse of my coral farm rather than using automation which can be subject to malfunction with horrendous consequences. Coral is quite forgiving when Alkalinity gradually falls to minimal levels but goes into a death roll when it is dumped in. Cry

There it is, for what it's worth. Hope it helps.

Aloha,
Mark  Hug
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