Neptune DOS easy way for one time water change?

[benmed]

Is there easy way to tell the DOS to do a one time water change of say 10 gallons over a two or three hour period? I don’t want to do it all the time. It seems that every time I reprogram the DOS it will only do a water change over the course of 24 hours rather than a quick one. And I’d love to be able to adjust the volume of what I want to do (5 gallons this week, 10 gallons next week, etc). Also, is there an easy way to say just add water in case I ever go through and vacuum the sand (so I take out, but I need DOS to add back in).

Thanks!!

 

[blaxsun]

The maximum volume a DOS can move is 1.3 gallons/hour, so this would take 7-8 hours minimum. You'd need to adjust the schedule to just operate during the desired 8-hour timeframe (or two intervals of 4-hours, etc.)

 

[areefer01]

You could use the new LLS sensors and a small pump mixed in with a pair of EB832 plugs and containers. Otherwise as noted above smaller amounts over time.

 

[frank-lloyd-reefer]

Yes you can setup using a Neptune task. There are two, automatic and manual. I believe I used the automatic and simply modified the schedule so I can kick it off whenever I want it to run.

Do note that the second pump runs in reverse for these tasks. Step 1 of the task points this out.

 

[ariellemermaid]

Is there easy way to tell the DOS to do a one time water change of say 10 gallons over a two or three hour period? I don’t want to do it all the time. It seems that every time I reprogram the DOS it will only do a water change over the course of 24 hours rather than a quick one. And I’d love to be able to adjust the volume of what I want to do (5 gallons this week, 10 gallons next week, etc). Also, is there an easy way to say just add water in case I ever go through and vacuum the sand (so I take out, but I need DOS to add back in).

Thanks!!

As others have said, the limiting factor to large water changes is that the DOS is actually pretty darn slow. But, it’s easy to do. I used the auto water change task to set it up initially, then under each pump head modified the interval. This is what mine looks like:

Equal times and volumes under the in and out heads. This changes 2 gallons between 1am and 3am. I recently went out of town for a month and just cut the volume in half. If I wanted it to run “now,” I’d just shift the times.

I do think if I wasn’t doing AWC though then I’d probably switch to more powerful pumps and optical sensors instead.

I can’t fully answer your last question though. What I would do in that situation is drop my spare PMUP in my NSW and add it that way (rather than carrying buckets from my fish room). However you can turn the “in” head to manual “on” but it would only flow at an exceedingly slow 25ml/min. The DOS is generally designed to dose specific measures of fluids, not really to work based on sensors or manual high flows (sensors can turn it off though).

So one option would be to set a program to run at max rate and a volume higher than you’d ever remove and set the times to “now.” If you wanted it to turn off automatically with a sensor then under advanced you would put “If HighSensor CLOSED then OFF”. But adjusting the programming every time you need to top off with NSW would be too much for me.

More reading on DOS programming:

Neptune Apex Tutorials Part 9: DOS

Neptune DOS Tutorial

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