water changes on these big tanks!!!!

[am3gross]

i have a total of about 425 gallons..... and it takes me (not including salt mix up) about 4 min to do a 55 gallon salt water change... now i know that the waterchanges is the biggest pain in the you know what and that is something that some dont do like they should.... so what i did was to make the worst part of the job the easiest!




my question is how long does it take you to do a water change and how much do you do?

[rkelman]

I do 55 gallons as well every month. How often are you changing am3gross? It takes me about a hour probably. My mixing drum is in the basement so it pumps really slow. I just use a siphon hose to empty it. I wish it was hard plumbed.

[am3gross]

i do this 2 times a month on my big tank! i change a total of about 30 gallons on my 75 2 times a month also.

[HighlandReefer]

I found this article by Randy Holmes-Farely interesting: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-10/rhf/index.php

I was doing bi-weekly 15 percent water changes until I read the graph. I am now back to doing weekly 8 percent water changes. Doing daily water changes like Randy does is just too much for me. :rollface:

[mflamb]

I do 60 gallons per week. Takes about 10-15 minutes, and that includes draining 60 gallons of RO/DI water into the mixing barrel and adding the salt. My water station is in the garage, and is plumbed to the tank. The sump return pump is used to drain the sump for water changes.

[Reefski's]

show us how you did it? plumbing pix please!

[rkelman]

Ya where's all the pics? My setup sucks so I have an excuse not to post. :)

[mflamb]

It's starts here:

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p117/mflamb/DSC00197.jpg
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p117/mflamb/DSC00191-1.jpg

A diagram:

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p117/mflamb/132223Step3CompleteBarrelConnection.jpg



out the garage wall here, one pipe fresh, one salt, one four 20 amp circuits:

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p117/mflamb/DSC00009.jpg

through the front yard here:

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p117/mflamb/DSC_2739.jpg

into the gameroom here:

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p117/mflamb/DSC00007.jpg

Here it is connected, one salt, one fresh, one sump drain for water changes. The top of the pic has 2 going into 1, that's the pumped sump drain and the sump overflow drain. You can barely see a ball valve on that pipe. I open that for sump drain and close the valve on the sump return pipe, and the water goes through the wall and down the sewer.:

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p117/mflamb/DSC00255.jpg

[rkelman]

Nice.

[taku]

very interesting and high tech setup! I would love to have that design, very simple yet involved, but it's just not something I can do based on my house design (tank in middle of home, concrete slab floor, tank on first floor.

Does anyone else have any lower-tech designs showing how or where in their design they remove water from the system and how they add the fresh mixed salt back?

[Untamed12]

My system is almost exactly like mflamb's, except that I have a dedicated sump that I use to capture a measured amount of tank water before opening the drain.

Unfortunately, I only put a 1" drain on the system, so it probably takes 10 minutes to drain out 50 gallons. It only takes a few minutes to refill it, though.

[mflamb]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13356632#post13356632 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by taku
very interesting and high tech setup! Thanks. I had the opportunity to plan the location of the tank when the house was being built. Also, since I sold all my tanks before I moved here, I had no time constraints in building my current system. That allowed me to build into my system all the time saving things that I always wanted.

[am3gross]

i will take pictures of mine here in a few.... mine is not as high tec... mine is very simple. but it all does the same thing....

[ReefingBuddha]

I do about 90 gallons a month on my tank. I have a reservoir inline after the chiller that I can isolate, dump, refill with RO/DI, mix inside, and the slowly put online again. Actually work by me, maybe 5 minutes but I estimate that it takes about 8 hours before the new water is fully mixed with the tank water. I like it.

I have a eheim 1260 with air injection as a mixing pump and 2 250w heaters on a separate temp. controller inside the reservoir.

Tank
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u257/reefingbuddha/DSC_0006-3.jpg

RO and Air line into that tank
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u257/reefingbuddha/DSC_0008-2.jpg

Dumping (Wish the plumbing was a little bigger to dump faster. This is also shown unfinished, it dumps directly to a storm drain from here.)
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u257/reefingbuddha/DSC_0007-2.jpg

Manifold (Green eheim pipe is obviously the feed from the chiller)
-When I introduce new water I usually only open the ball valve a little bit so its very slow flow into the reserviour, taking longer to mix water into the sump.
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u257/reefingbuddha/DSC_0010-4.jpg

And here is a sketchup to show what is going on inside. The water goes around the support baffles in a circular flow.
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u257/reefingbuddha/WCtank.jpg

[Untamed12]

One of your snails escaped!!! (ha..ha..)

[rkelman]

lol. Its a big sucker too.

[FishTruck]

65 gallons each week on my 450 gallon system. Set up like yours, water moves with pumps, stirs with pumps, dumps directly into sewer line, salt is measured by a precision scale so I dont have to check salinity.

Water change, skimmer maint, filter sock change = 15 minutes each week.

Now... if I could just figure out how to make scraping the back panel of my display tank easier... I would really be on to something.

[forddna]

I change 40g every two weeks. I have a 44g Brute trash can located in the laundry room. It's on a dolly. I have to roll it out of there, through my kitchen, and around the corner over to my tank.

Meanwhile, I siphon water from the main tank into 5g water jugs, 3-4 gallons at a time because I'm small and 5g gets too heavy. :p I fill one jug, then swap the siphon to another jug, carry first jug outside, and dump it slowly over my deck railing, down two stories. Run back in, swap the siphone hose again.....and again......and again.

At some point, I realize my powerheads need to be unplugged, so I do that. :lol:

I pump the water from the Brute can into my sump and pump it a bit at a time into the main tank.

Takes 30-45 minutes.

I need a fish room.

[rkelman]

Why not siphon to a drain forddna? Or pump to a drain? That's waaay too much work.

[forddna]

You mean into the house's plumbing? I'm told that's not good for the septic system.

[rkelman]

Ok get a long hose and pump or siphon it outside?

[ReefingBuddha]

I used to do the same thing on my 120 forddna, takes WAY to much work. After a while I just stuck a pump in my sump, got a very long piece of hose, and pump the water straight out over my balcony into the yard. I put another pump into the brute trash can in the closest, switched over the hose from one to the other and filled up the sump again. Carrying all those 5 gallon buckets was killing me.


That would have been a adventurous snail as its about 15 ft from the tank and outside!

[mikeobrien]

how much should i do for a 90g