igvm
12/28/2012, 01:58 PM
Here is what I built to dose food for my corals. Some time ago I wanted to leave town for a week of a vacation. I was worried about my corals, I wanted them to be fed when I am away, but I did not want to bother my friends or let people from LFS come in and feed my corals. So I set up this system which delivers refrigerated liquid food such as phyto- or zooplankton or Oyster Feast. Of course the challenge was to build a system, which would deliver food straight from the refrigerator, so that food is never exposed to room temperature.
So I built this system from a small refrigerator and 3-unit dosing pump with a controller. See attached drawings. As you can see, there is a line (let's call it main line) running from the return line of my tank into the refrigerator (yes, I cut a hole in it, run cables and the pipe and sealed it with silicone), through one of the units of my dosing pump (let's call it main pump) and back into the return line. 2 other units pump food from their bottles into this main line. Of course bottles are sitting inside the refrigerator.
I programmed the dosing pump in such a way that at certain time (say time "t") it pumps 5ml from one of the bottles into the main line. As you understand, the food after being pumped from the bottle, still sits inside the refrigerator. Then at time t+1minute the main pump pumps about 100ml of water from the tank return line back, pushing the 5ml of food into the return line. 100 ml is just enough to make sure all the food has been washed through the main line and reach the return line of my tank. Of course since this is aquarium water, there would be nothing wrong about pumping 200 or 1000 ml of it through the system.
This way I can dose 2 types of food independently and leave for vacation and not worry so much about my corals being hungry. Since then I went for vacation 2 times and my corals are happy when I return.
I hope someone else finds this helpful.
So I built this system from a small refrigerator and 3-unit dosing pump with a controller. See attached drawings. As you can see, there is a line (let's call it main line) running from the return line of my tank into the refrigerator (yes, I cut a hole in it, run cables and the pipe and sealed it with silicone), through one of the units of my dosing pump (let's call it main pump) and back into the return line. 2 other units pump food from their bottles into this main line. Of course bottles are sitting inside the refrigerator.
I programmed the dosing pump in such a way that at certain time (say time "t") it pumps 5ml from one of the bottles into the main line. As you understand, the food after being pumped from the bottle, still sits inside the refrigerator. Then at time t+1minute the main pump pumps about 100ml of water from the tank return line back, pushing the 5ml of food into the return line. 100 ml is just enough to make sure all the food has been washed through the main line and reach the return line of my tank. Of course since this is aquarium water, there would be nothing wrong about pumping 200 or 1000 ml of it through the system.
This way I can dose 2 types of food independently and leave for vacation and not worry so much about my corals being hungry. Since then I went for vacation 2 times and my corals are happy when I return.
I hope someone else finds this helpful.