Poor mans auto top off

Due to limited space under my 65, I'm looking to make a poor mans auto top off. Basically I'm looking to build something along the lines of the Kents Aquadose system, but just use it for top off and not spend $25 on it. Has anybody ever built anything like this? I know it's a very simple design, but mainly I'm curious where the best place to get the parts to make it. I'll just score me a 2 gallon jug of some sort, some IV tubing, and a thumbwheel of some sorts to adjust the drip. Any advice would be apprecieated. Thanks.

I like the idea of the "glug jug", but once again my main problem is space. My 20 gallon sump is pretty well full and I don't have room for a jug. A small one maybe, but not one that would last for more than a day. I may have to look into this concept further though. Thanks.

If you could hide a jug by the tank somewhere you could silicone a airline hose to the bottom of the jug and have that drip into your sump. You could have a constant drip(if you know your rate of evaporation) and control it with a maxijet air inlet controller thing. Similar to this:




Edited by Lyscer - August 10 2006 at 1:15pm

That is my home made drip acclimator. But For a while there I was thinking about doing it for auto-top off. I took a expo-marker and made a mark on my sump when it needed water, after I dumped in 5gallons of RO I would make another mark, so that I knew how much the water made up 5 gallons, then just make a mark and date it every day so you can see how long it takes your to evaporate 5 gallons or whatever, then set the drip thing to fill up a gallon jug and measure the time it takes and adjust it to go faster/slower and then you will know if you will be okay dripping that much water in your tank or not. Hope that makes sense.

last thing I would suggest is to secure the end that drips into your tank. I have been drip acclimating and have had the hose slip out of my sump. I come back an hour later and water is everywhere.

I hear ya. If I had the room I'd go more advanced. My goal was to keep everything under the stand. Gotta keep the wife happy, and buckets with tubes laying around the living room probably wouldn't cut it. I'm looking at a 2 - 2 1/2 gallon container for my application. My sump could easily handle 5 or more gallons if there were a failure that ended up releasing all the water for whatever reason.