Dosing pump question

I'm having some trouble picturing what pieces I am going to need to do what I want to do. I'm hoping someone can give me some guidance. I'm planning two things at once, automating top offs and automating dosing.

This is my dosing thread.

I now have a little room directly behind my tank that I am going to use to automate top offs and Alk/Ca dosing.

http://www.3reef.com/forums/i-made/peredhil-fish-room-66572.html

What I have in my mind are three small tubes running through the wall, into the tank.

Two of these will be for my Alk and Ca bottles. So I'll start here.

I basically have two jugs, each with a hand pump that I use to squirt a dose into a little cup. I'm guessing a dosing pump will need to replace the hand pump via a tube that will run through a hole in the lid.

• Are there two holes in the lid needed? For air to enter the jug. Can you buy lids for this purpose?
• I checked out dosing pumps at BRS and was a bit shell-shocked. $90 bucks? Is that normal?
• Recommendations on dosing pumps?

I couldn't find any other ones that I knew were worth a crap. I'm not trying to scrap and save here, that just sounded a little too expensive... My plan would be to put these on a shelf in that little room.

I know I'll need a couple of timers too and that I'll need to measure time vs. volume before I actually start using them and adjust as needed.

 

I would use one of these AquaMedic Reefdoser triple unless you have a controller to do the work.

 

Sounds like you have a pretty good handle on what is needed to me.

From what I've seen peristaltic pumps are generally at least that expensive, yes. The BRS ones are the cheapest I've seen.

You will need a hole in the top of the container for air to get in, or at least a non-airtight lid.

 

Thanks. I like that unit Otty shows... kind of expensive, so I'm looking at the double instead of the triple... I'm only dosing Alk/Ca so that should be fine (I don't dose Mg every day... more like once a month).

Might go w/the triple though to keep the Mg easy too... that's a lot o mula.

Thanks for the info.

 

Just ordered the triple from Marine Depot w/free shipping.

Mine as well get the triple and hook up my Mg too. Yay!

So looking forward to this and I'm sure my corals will appreciate the consistency.

Will update when I get it.

 

Awesome, I'd be tempted to just go all out as well. I went CA reactor though.

 

When I set this up, how should I do the dosing schedule for Ca, Alk, and Mg.

After lights out I know, but I dont know in what order or how much time to space between Cal and Alk. Since Im using the dosing brain, I can program it for whenever, so whatever is ideal, is what I want to shoot for.

Lights out is 8:45pm. So I was thinking having the doses start at midnight.

Thanks

 

How much of each are you dosing each day right now total?

When I dose 2-part I leave 10-15 minutes between Ca and alk so they each have a chance to get distributed throughout the entire tank and well-mixed before the next part goes in.
You could try dosing Ca during the day or all day long and then just alk at night because that will bring up your PH. I think I would dose lots of smallish alk doses to raise the night-time PH as much as possible. Depending on how much you're dosing in total though some doses during the day may help keep the alk stable.
For example in my tank right now I'm having to dose 60ml of alk every day which is like 2dkh worth, I'm splitting it into 2 doses though, one in the morning one in the evening to try and keep things more stable. I may even try splitting it up even further so the level doesn't bounce around so much.

Also one thing to watch/test for is when the pump starts does it pump right away or does some air get in the tube and it has to force that out before any of the liquid comes out. That is one thing I heard people complain about, having to take into consideration the startup time for the pump, maybe it doesn't happen with the one you're getting but just thought I'd mention it.

 

awesome, thanks.

i dose 18 ml per day of each (alk and ca, do not currently dose mg daily). though, im going to dose a bit more ca for a while after i set it up to get my ca up higher. its been steady at 400, but with the auto dose I wanted to raise my ca and mg a bit. alk has always been stable 12dKH, so ill continue 18ml per day on that... and keep testing and adjust as necessary.

I read you need to time out these pumps to see how long each one needs to dose x ml, im thinking that would account for startup. I do plan on doing this. will test with plain water... figuring thatll be close enough.

pump should be in this coming week, so im going to build a shelf for the jugs and stuff here in the next day or two (i hope).

 

Good to hear you have it set up.