Salt Water Mixing Stations Let's See Them!!

[TylerS]

Unless you have a small tank using a dosing pump to do water changes is a bad idea. The pump will burn out as they aren't really made for that purpose.

DOS pump MTBF is 5000 hours * 60 min/hr * 250ml max DOS / minute gives about 75,000,000 ml until the average DOS pump dies. That's about 20,000 gallons. You can do the math from there to estimate how long it will last. It's about 6 years if you're doing 8 gallons a day. If you cut the pump rate to 125 ml/min you just may have just cut your pump lifetime from 6 years to 3 years (depends on how they tested it and what 5000 hrs really means to Neptune).

 

[Budman's Corals]

Unless you have a small tank using a dosing pump to do water changes is a bad idea. The pump will burn out as they aren't really made for that purpose.

DOS pump MTBF is 5000 hours * 60 min/hr * 250ml max DOS / minute gives about 75,000,000 ml until the average DOS pump dies. That's about 20,000 gallons. You can do the math from there to estimate how long it will last. It's about 6 years if you're doing 8 gallons a day. If you cut the pump rate to 125 ml/min you just may have just cut your pump lifetime from 6 years to 3 years (depends on how they tested it and what 5000 hrs really means to Neptune).

300 bucks every 3 years isn't bad. I can deal with that

 

[Frop]

Step One) Fill the 5 gallon. And manually move waste water into washing machine.

Step Two) Add salt, heater, and power head into bucket.

Step Three) White 5 gallon jugs are waste water only. Remove and then add..

 

[Mini Coop]

Following

 

[Frop]

I built this last year. Does all my water changes automatically also. Was well worth the investment. Yes that is 5 stages of di alone on my ridi system.

One of the BRS staff on the phone said he has 4 DI resin on his setup do you have 5? the last 4 are black the one before it is more brown. Unless the brown means it still has life left.

 

[Frop]

The station i have

as u can c has a swirl because of the hose in it but I'd like to c the ideas other ppl has.

The heater could break if it isn't all the way in the water. I forgot to unplug mine on a water change and I heard it crack after it was out of the water. Quickly took that to the sink and trashed it after it was cool.

 

[alexgray1122]

Mix in 5 gallon bucket with a power head and heater, then after a day or so put it next to the tank and remove waste water at the same level as new water. Now I'm old school with the waste water and just dump it outside or in my toilet. Depends on how I feel that day lol. Then slowly pour into sump. Constantly checking salinity for the next 12 hours or so every other hour.

 

[Rick.45cal]

Unless you have a small tank using a dosing pump to do water changes is a bad idea. The pump will burn out as they aren't really made for that purpose.

DOS pump MTBF is 5000 hours * 60 min/hr * 250ml max DOS / minute gives about 75,000,000 ml until the average DOS pump dies. That's about 20,000 gallons. You can do the math from there to estimate how long it will last. It's about 6 years if you're doing 8 gallons a day. If you cut the pump rate to 125 ml/min you just may have just cut your pump lifetime from 6 years to 3 years (depends on how they tested it and what 5000 hrs really means to Neptune).

Actually the DOS is advertised as being for this purpose.

That's also 5000 hours of run time, the unit operates very intermittantly it isn't running a constant duty cycle. While I agree running large changes rapidly with it will likely increase the wear on the unit. I don't think anyone can expect ANY equipment in this industry to be bulletproof reliable. That simply isn't the case. You can minimize your risks for failure but lets be realistic here, planned obsolescence is a real thing, it's prevalent in nearly all manufacturing. Besides if they used the best stepper motors people would complain that it was too expensive. It's a catch 22.

I guess you have to take it for what it's worth. If you are going to hook up any automatic waterchange system and then NEVER pay attention to it's activities then regardless of the system you are using you are going to have a rude awakening some day. Mine is set up and regularly checked on and inspected. I've swapped my time of about 1 hour a week to pull my siphon out, hook it up do my manual waterchange, and clean everything up and put it away, (not including mixing salt/testing salt for parameters). So that's 52 hours a year I could be doing something else. At a measly $10 an hour that's $520 a year (just fyi my time costs WAY more than that), the DOS has already paid for itself in my time just not doing a weekly waterchange. So if I go look at it 5 times during the day to make sure it's doing what it is suppose to, and test my salinity once a week. Then that sounds like a wonderful trade too me. Even if I have to replace the entire DOS every year I'm still winning!

(Even if one pump fails I will notice a change in my ATO top off consumption within a day). I'm not advocating not paying attention, just offering a different way. There are lots of risks in everything, every aquarist should weigh theirs carefully.

 

[Budman's Corals]

Very well said. Rick. Luckily I work outta the house so I'm always around my system. So I'm always hearing the thing run .

 

[USMA36]

What would be a decent pump that won't cost me an arm or a marriage? I need to pump up about 20'. Does a pump need to be labled as saltwater safe? Or will anything strong enough from Amazon or harbor fright be ok?

 

[Rick.45cal]

Step One) Fill the 5 gallon. And manually move waste water into washing machine.

Step Two) Add salt, heater, and power head into bucket.

Step Three) White 5 gallon jugs are waste water only. Remove and then add..

You are in desperate need of a drain my friend (or a line long enough to run outside of the house for waste water)

 

[Frop]

You are in desperate need of a drain my friend (or a line long enough to run outside of the house for waste water)

Drains are dangerous jk

I was siphoning it out with the garden hose ;p

 

[TylerS]

What would be a decent pump that won't cost me an arm or a marriage? I need to pump up about 20'. Does a pump need to be labled as saltwater safe? Or will anything strong enough from Amazon or harbor fright be ok?

Is it really 20'? One of these gets you to 12' https://www.neptunesystems.com/pmup/, you could run two of them in series. So one at the lowest point (basement?) and a second one 10' up (first floor?), but I think you may be able to even put them one right after the other. I'm not positive that's ok to do though. I would e-mail and ask neptune if they would work that way. If you have a small tank and only need to move a small amount of water this could work http://www.avastmarine.com/products/peristaltic-pump-for-auto-top-off

Also, regarding my comments about using a DOS dosing pump for water changes, you can certainly do that (as @Rick.45cal and @budman mention) just don't plan on the pump lasting longer than 20,000 gallons. 50% of the motors will fail before then, and 50% after (that's what MTBF - mean time between failure means). That's also not including any other components failing, or the other lower cost dosing pump options. I've seen posts where people complain about dosing units used as ATO or water changes failing after a few months, so hopefully they will be informed and not surprised when a pump that's designed to pump in the milliliter per minute range fails after a short period of time. Of course all of this is heavily based on your tank size and how much water you need to move. If you change out 100 gallons a week then you've got about 3.5 years on the netpune dos motor (which is pretty good...) but if you're only changing 20 gallons a week the motor failing probably isn't a concern.

 

[Rick.45cal]

I'd choose a pump specifically for saltwater @USMA36. I've known too many people in the past who haven't done that only to find out that there was a brass bushing in the pump, or some metal part oxidizes and either freezes the pump up or kills everything in the tank. It's really wise to pick something that is specifically for our application.

Honestly anything with a plug on it that comes from harbor freight is probably best used as a paperweight. Just my $.02

 

[USMA36]

Ok thanks. Any recommendations? I found his on amazon but there's no clear answer other than it's all plastic and stainless steel and he only oil is vegetable oil. Superior Pump 91330 1/3 HP Thermoplastic Submersible Utility Pump https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000X07GQS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_TIJQybQA5Q74F

I'd choose a pump specifically for saltwater @USMA36. I've known too many people in the past who haven't done that only to find out that there was a brass bushing in the pump, or some metal part oxidizes and either freezes the pump up or kills everything in the tank. It's really wise to pick something that is specifically for our application.

Honestly anything with a plug on it that comes from harbor freight is probably best used as a paperweight. Just my $.02

 

[Rick.45cal]

Ok thanks. Any recommendations? I found his on amazon but there's no clear answer other than it's all plastic and stainless steel and he only oil is vegetable oil. Superior Pump 91330 1/3 HP Thermoplastic Submersible Utility Pump https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000X07GQS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_TIJQybQA5Q74F

Personally I wouldn't risk it. Maybe someone will be able to clue you in on a really killer deal on something that's saltwater safe.

Is this to pump new saltwater up to your display tank from your mixing station?

 

[ShinerMaginer]

Following

 

[s2nhle]

very interesting.

 

[haanstang]

Two 32 gallon cans for rodi water one 44 gallon for new saltwater. I put more rodi storage than salt storage so I would always have some rodi water for ATO and any other uses.
The 32 gallon cans drain and fill the saltwater can form underneath or they can go into the pump and get pumped straight to the Fishroom or threw the pump to a bucket or hose.
The fresh saltwater can be mixed and pumped to the fishroom or to a bucket or hose.
When the fishroom is done there will be two 44 gallon cans in there as well one for new saltwater and one for old. I'm doing this because I will be using dosing pumps for AWC. Also have one 32 gallon can in fishroom for storage for the ATO water.
All three cans in the fishroom will be filled and emptied from this pump.
I wanted another storage for rodi in the fishroom because I will be having 2 ten gallon ATO compartments built in to my sump so I can let the lime water dissipate and settle in one compartment while I am using the other.

 

[FishLover01]

In my opinion this should be as robust as possible to give you options. My system has 2 different configurations....

A) A Renew continuous water changing system
B) The ability to mix 55 gallons and bring it on-line after draining 55 gallons of existing tank water
C) The ability to draw buckets of RO/DI water or Saltwater


You run the system in either configuration (but not both) but the beauty is you never have to touch a bucket. In addition, my sink has it's own RO/DI spiget on the sink for cleaning the test vials. We are not up and running with this sytem yet. However, I designed the system to be as automated or as manual as I need. I plan on running it 99% of the time using the Renew water changing system.

Here are some pics.... It's hard to photograph because it's in a fish room and located behind the 400 gallon display. Here are my best attempts at pics....

Wow...Your station is perfect. Absolutely love it and all your equipment.