High Tide Aquatics

Automating an aquarium for a couple weeks.

Ok I'm about to go visit the hawaiian islands in a couple weeks, and I'd like some helpful hints on how to get by with the bare minimum of human interventions for about 11 days or so, and I have two tanks.

I could split off a tee off my RO/DI unit with float switches for the fresh water top off, since both tanks will have the sumps run nearly dry after 11 days.

1 tank is primarily softies so calcium and alkalinity are not an issue there. However my stony tank it is an issue. My parents will be swinging by every 2-3 days to feed my fish, but would tossing in 3days worth of "daily dosing" stuff be too much of a wild fluctuation? Would I need to go with a dosing pump? I'd like to make something semi-automated anyways, but don't know much about dosing pumps in general or how to adjust their flow, etc (Dosing pump faq anyone? :D).

Food can be fed every 3 days, sure they'll be mighty hungry, but probably can go without food too badly.

Skimmer? I don't really want to turn it off, guess I could dial it back to skim extremely dry, then I can go 11 days, but I don't want to have to subject my parents to the foul stench of the skimate emptying task if possible.

I'd appreciate some feedback, and quickly, since if I need to order anything I need to do it quickly.
Anything I'm possibly forgetting?
 
I'd set up an overflow for the skimmer and pay someone to feed the fish and dose on your normal schedule. I do that even for short weekend trips. Feeding fish every couple days just sounds cruel. I feed mine twice a day and see making them wait 2-3 days. We pay about $20 a day ($10 a visit/feeding) for a house sitter (one of my wifes old co-workers) and it's worth it but we do have 2 cat's and a dog also.

I tell you what, I'll got to Hawaii for you and save you the trouble :)
 
I have a dosing pump for alk, and a good ol' bucket with a float valve for H20 top off. How high is the tanks demand? With my system I'm good for a couple of days, however beyond that I'll need to supplement Ca and refill my bucket. I don't travel like I used to, basically to my parents houses, and the tank is a convenient excuse to escape.

If you can calculate your demand (which any good physicist should be able to do), some two part and a couple of dosing pumps and you can go a long time on that.

AFA hooking your RO up with float switches you'll need a Auto Shut off valve, unlimited H2O supply scares me though. I only have a couple of tanks setup like that, and they make me nervous.
 
figure out how much you dose alk and ca (2 part I'm guessing?) a day, and then calculate how much water evap you have a day, then using two aqualifter pumps and two topoff water resevoirs, just dose those resevoirs accordingly, one with the ALK dose, and one with the Ca dose. Run some low powered powerheads inside the resevoirs to keep things stirred.

would that work for you? feeding, you can have your parents come 2-3 days, but have an automatic feeder feeding daily. They'd just have to refill it every 2-3 days.
 
Do what I do - find a reefing friend to watch your place, then you return the favor when they travel. You can put your skimmer on a timer too, but 11 days is alot with no one checking the tank.
 
Levi I'll pass on the swapping rolls bit ;)

Jeremy: I tried calculating demand once, but with error bars as large as 1 dKh (half if I use 10mL instead of 5mL) unless I let my alk drop quite a bit over quite a few days I've never been able to successful track it. But yeah hooking up to an unlimited amount of freshwater does scary me too, thought about trying to find a cheap solenoid (I've heard rumors of them existing at home depot for $10-15) and simply put that on the feed end of the RO unit as a last ditch "shut this **** off", but that could only work with a single tank (mostly because I only have one electronic switch with a relay already hooked up).

Art: Those do look promising, are they adjustable though? Seems like they're anything but precise as the water level in whatever reservoir you have drops so does the feed rate.

Arnold: I thought about that, however it might be a bit of an inconvenience to have someone come every day.
 
[quote author=sfsuphysics link=topic=2711.msg28477#msg28477 date=1197929830]
Art: Those do look promising, are they adjustable though? Seems like they're anything but precise as the water level in whatever reservoir you have drops so does the feed rate.[/quote]

Do you have an ATO system setup? Just use your existing float valves. Whenever your ATO tops off water, just have two pumps instead draw from two different resevoirs with the diluted 2-part.

Your evap should be fairly consistent from day to day, especially these days when it's just cold and the weather doesn't fluctuate.
 
I don't have a ATO system setup, that's half of what I'm making this post about :)

As to the evaporation rate, it depends how cold it gets, remember heat isn't the only thing that caused evaporation.
 
My friend setup his tank so almost everything automated. Everything works great when he is home. The last two times he traveled the auto top off stopped working on the day that he left. His brother supposed to feed the fish and kept an eye on the tank. If there was any problem, he supposed to call me right away. The guy called me after 5 days saying there are some weird noise and the water is about 1" below the overflow box :eek: .. The second time he got "smarter" and called me the second day because there were a lot of water on the floor ;D .. I'm sure next time when he leave, I will have to go to his house everyday to check thing out.

I would pay someone to come over to check out the tank at least couple times a week. 11 days is a long time.
 
[quote author=sfsuphysics link=topic=2711.msg28480#msg28480 date=1197930877]
I don't have a ATO system setup, that's half of what I'm making this post about :)

As to the evaporation rate, it depends how cold it gets, remember heat isn't the only thing that caused evaporation.

[/quote]

well, set one up! =) I couldn't imagine a system without a top off, especially with all the different topoff solutions out there these days.
 
Mike, when I watch over my friends tank we do like 1 visit every 2 or 3 days for topoff and feeding. You could always setup a modem connection to your aquacontroller to monitor from the web. Or hire a service for $60-80 a visit. Depends how much you value your livestock. Maybe you could convince Andy since he lives close to you.
 
I agree with Arnold someone to come over every couple of days to feed, check on auto top off or manually top off, and maybe clean out the skimmer cup on the fourth or fifth day would seem like the best.

I have two automatic feeders if you want to borrow as well if that would be better.
 
I wouldn't add all kinds of automation and then go on vacation - there are bound to be problems tuning the gear. If I am adding something within a month of vacation, I don't add it till after the vacation.

For everything else, tune all equipment a month before you leave, giving you a month to troubleshoot. :D
 
[quote author=Thales link=topic=2711.msg28509#msg28509 date=1197941595]
I wouldn't add all kinds of automation and then go on vacation - there are bound to be problems tuning the gear. If I am adding something within a month of vacation, I don't add it till after the vacation.

For everything else, tune all equipment a month before you leave, giving you a month to troubleshoot. :D
[/quote]I definitely go by these standards, when I hooked up my Alk dosing system I had the pump pulling and feeding two small plastic H2O bottles with lines marked at 3 fluid oz. which is my tanks demand. It took a little tweaking to get the timer setup to deliver the proper dose. That was about two weeks total time to dial it in.

That being said, if someone is coming to feed your fish, it's really not that complicated to give someone a plastic cup with a line and say "fill to the line with X and dump here". Really all your tank needs is Alk unless you have some huge demand for Ca, if that's the case I would suggest using some turbo cal or another Ca supplement with a bucket and a float valve. Again, one scoop fill with H2O, pretty bonehead so if you have a friend do it (read non-reefer), they can't really screw it up.

I'm leaving for ~72 hours next week and will be biting my nails the whole time. Of course I'm in Narnia and nobody here has aquariums so I've got nobody to help me out, you've most likely got to have someone local that can be your "go to" guy in case there are any problems.
 
I leave my tank for months at a time. I travel for work most of the year (I haven't been home since mid November.)

My one simple suggestion?

Hire a reefer. End of story. show them your setup, where everything is, and have them stop by twice a week or so. make a list of things to do, and leave an emergency number. Any college kids you know? I know when I was in college an extra $50 a week would have made my life much easier - Ok, I would have just drank better beer. . .

other suggestions:

get a topoff!!!!!!
the one thing that has kept me in reefing(both when I go away, and when I get really bored with my tank,) has been my litermeter. I just make sure my top off container is full.

with my new setup my topoff is a 29 gallon tank. i also have 3 old salt buckets filled with RO water. My tank guy knows how to hook up my RO and make water as needed. 45 gallons of top off will get me about 3 weeks or so.

I dose kalk via my topoff. I don't have sps so I don't really worry about other stuff. I know I should, but i'm just that kind of lazy.

Before you go:
change all media
clean skimmer
Do a big waterchange
Scrape the glass

Sit down and enjoy your tank for an hour.
 
[quote author=bad coffee link=topic=2711.msg29256#msg29256 date=1199509600]
Before you go:
change all media
clean skimmer
Do a big waterchange
Scrape the glass

Sit down and enjoy your tank for an hour.
[/quote]

I agree, but do this at least 4 -7 days before you go to make sure anything goofed up gets caught before you leave.

I am leaving the country for 7 days in 14 days (hey Jim and Norm will you be on call for the house sitter? :D ) and am not all that worried. I am going to vinegar the big pumps tomorrow and do a water change next week. :D
 
Well I just got back and everything looks more or less fine. The red poof algae issue I have showed up a little bit, but what can you expect with almost 2 weeks of no manual cleaning. The acrylic ironically was great! I did notice my dad did forget to dose my 2 part though, so I'm a little worried about how low the levels went, don't have time now to check.

My glass tank had a bigger issue, I noticed my two internal pumps and skimmer stopped working, which is no biggy it's a softie tank, apparently I got another RBTA out of that though *SIGH*... but I dodged a big bullet because the power strip those three things were plugged into (and only those three), was quite char-broiled. I'm guessing my pops got a little careless with adding top off water or something, but luckily the strip was right in the center and only made some soot on the inside of the cabinet. THere was quite a bit of algae, but eh... no skimmer, no internal pumps only the return pump as flow... I think I did ok.. .so that tank will go skimmerless until I get a replacement pump (that pump didn't get the cord melted but for some reason isn't starting... but once again don't have time to do any sort of fixing).
 
Back
Top