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Water Changes


DavidR
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Am I the only one that is constantly trying to find the most efficient way to perform water changes? I have decided that a fully automated system like what Cory uses isn't right for me as several tanks I have can't be drilled and are spread across a couple rooms, but a semi-automated version is what I'm working towards. Seems I have been in a constant state of refinement to gain efficiency with some automation being added.

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When you've got more than one tank this is always a struggle. I personally don't do auto water changes based on the layout of the space I've got and the extra room required to run the drain pipes would reduce my space even more. I use a python to drain everything and a combination of a python to fill tap and a Brute can on wheels with a pump to fill RO/DI for tanks with sensitive inhabitants that I need to control params of. 

Depending on your setup and your source water IMO the best system you can have is a constant drip. A constant drip system means that the water change process is continuous and will be done slowly throughout the day. On small tanks like tens, 0.5-1 gallon per hour drip emitters are perfect as you'll get either 12 or 24 gallons of water changed a day slowly. The thing about these systems are that they don't mean you'll never have to do water changes again, you'll still need to get in the tank and siphon up mulm as well as siphon after you scrape anything off the glass if it's been a while. The reason these systems are hard for most is that you need to have constant source water that never fluctuates in values, on top of that a high demand water heater in order to keep up with the system, and your mixing valve setup needs to be reliable.

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I toyed with a drip emitter sytem for my four tanks a while back and when I did the math and saw that a half gallon per hour drip system for each of my four tanks would use 17,520 gallons of water a year, I decided to stick with the way I'm doing things now. (0.5 gallons per hour per tank for four tanks is 2 gallons of water per hour. 24 hours a day for 365 days and you end up with 17,520 gallons of water a year being used for a ten gallon, twenty gallon, a thirty gallon, and fifty gallon tank.) That's kind of a lot of water. I was planning to just let the waste water ooze out through my open bottomed sump pump well, but asking seventeen thousand gallons of water to ooze out that hole might have been asking a lot. That kind of water volume could have undermined the house foundation over time and caused me very large problems. 

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Yep constant drip systems are more than just having the water, but also about managing where the drainage goes. The two hobbyists I know using them live in the tropics and the water drains out to sump and from there has a bulkhead that runs out 50 feet of PVC drain to part of their yard, the other drains directly to a public sewer linked drain on their property. 

I have a septic tank, so I personally cannot run one on my drainage system, I'd have to basically build a leech field at the other end of my property and drain to that which just isn't cost effective. 

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If you don't want to drill for a drip/overflow set up, you can have a source water and hook dosing pumps up to the tanks. A 2 pump system per tank where one is drawing from fresh water and dumping into the tank and the second is running the same volume from the tank to a waste line. From there you just need to have water and drains even it its just two 55g buckets sitting in the room.

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