Stabilizing pH with Kalk in ATO with Apex pH Probe

[JordanM]

I have a dosing container all rigged up to suck about 1/2" from the bottom of a jug. I will be using the 50ml/min peristaltic pump. The "ATO" jug/container needs to be vented or it will create a vacuum and nothing will be dispensed correct? Any concern with how long the kalk will be exposed to the air. I read before that it looses potency pretty fast when exposed.

 

[Drauka99]

Kalkwasser water forms a "crust" when exposed to air. the potency loss in a small vessel like a dosing container will be negligible

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

Kalkwasser water forms a "crust" when exposed to air. the potency loss in a small vessel like a dosing container will be negligible

Spot on. Randy Holmes-Farley measured the potency of his limewater and found that after 20 days in a 44-gallon reservoir with a loose-fitting lid, there was almost no drop in potency.

 

[JordanM]

Seems like the setup with the AutoAqua sensor will not work. The problem is that it takes 5 minutes when you plug it in to calibrate before it starts to sense. In the meantime the pump continues to run in these 5 minutes so if the level is already over the sensor the pump will continue to run and not be sensed by the auto aqua sensor. Seems this is a poor design and the outlet should remain off until after the calibration has completed. I may have to use a different method for sensing the water level and reading this back to the apex to determine if the water level is to high to turn the pump on and dose. Any suggestions?

 

[JordanM]

Looks like i can use the OS-1 optical sensor but a FMM is required so your almost to the cost of what the atk cost.

 

[Drauka99]

you can us a break out box and a simple set of float valves connected to it to control a pump to dose the kalk. I had mine setup with multiple redundancies, high and low floats in the sump and a reservoir float to keep the pump from running dry. This is one of the few times a DIY Breakout box is better than the one offered from Neptune. there are lots of DIY threads on the web for building one. Me and a friend built ours and for less than the cost of 1 from Neptune we had 2 (with parts for more available).

 

[JordanM]

I bit the bullet and ended up getting the atk. It looks like I should change it to stand alone mode right away. Is there any other things that I should change while I am setting it up? So the code for dosing 1000ml over the 24hr period and dose it every 30 minutes with it turning off if the pH is above 8.35:

Fallback OFF
OSC 000:00/000:25/029:35 Then ON
If pH > 8.35 Then OFF

I will also have an additional optical sensor that I want to cut the pump off if the tank was nearing overflowing and also would like to add into the code that if the pump is on for more than 3 minutes it would cut the power to it as well. How would I go about adding this code in?