ReefFlow - Automated Red Sea Downflow Valve

[ThatsNoMoon]

Hi all,

I've been working on this project for a bit, mostly for myself, but a few people told me that they'd want one or that I should look at making these for others.
I thought it would be best to jump onto the forums and show a quick example of what I made so far and see what sort of feedback it gets. I've done my best to compress all the main info into 4 pictures rather than creating a huge wall of text in a forum post. I've also popped a quick video below showing off the prototype. (Youtube Video)

 

[Gumbies R Us]

This is impressive work well done!

 

[ThatsNoMoon]

This is impressive work well done!

Thanks! Not sure if you have experience with the Red Sea Valves but I assume you know about the daily struggle of tuning that valve just from how common of a complaint it is with them. If you had a red sea tank, would you want this for your own system?

 

[exnisstech]

That is really cool. Only problem I have is I try to have as few points of failure as possible. I can't help but wonder if people are just trying to hard to keep a certain level in the overflow and tweaking more often than needed. I just tore down a gen1 reefer 170 after 6 years running and TBO mine really wasn't terrible. At first it drove me nuts but eventually I just stopped looking at the level and only adjusted it when the overflow got noisy from water entering the emergency drain. A few times the level got low and I was getting bubbles but usually it was noisy. I would go a month or longer between adjustments. I also have a Gen 2 reefer 300 that's been running 2 years and I rarely have to adjust the valve but I almost never look at the overflow level. It's quite and the water level is fine so I just roll with it.

 

[ThatsNoMoon]

That is really cool. Only problem I have is I try to have as few points of failure as possible. I can't help but wonder if people are just trying to hard to keep a certain level in the overflow and tweaking more often than needed. I just tore down a gen1 reefer 170 after 6 years running and TBO mine really wasn't terrible. At first it drove me nuts but eventually I just stopped looking at the level and only adjusted it when the overflow got noisy from water entering the emergency drain. A few times the level got low and I was getting bubbles but usually it was noisy. I would go a month or longer between adjustments. I also have a Gen 2 reefer 300 that's been running 2 years and I rarely have to adjust the valve but I almost never look at the overflow level. It's quite and the water level is fine so I just roll with it.

Totally agreed that sometimes it's not a big deal for the water to go into the overflow, I was doing the same for a while with my tank but after I installed the Reef Mat, it made the emergency overflow totally bypass any filtration. I noticed it was gunking up my reactor and skimmer in the sump so that's when I started having to fiddle with the valve a lot more to get it just right.

 

[X-37B]

Cool! I just added a ball valve onto the return. Opened up the rs gate and used the ball valve to adjust the flow. It has been very consistent with no issues since installing it.