ideas for top up

[Cyno]

gang,

i need people to put there thinking caps on......

I need to think of a way to improve my top up, at the mo my top up is via kalk stirrer, the problem is I have a deltec eco cooler and evap is very high so topping up alot, and in my opinion too much through the kalk stirrer, any ideas on how i could go about setting up two pumps in top up resesvoir, one with a straight feed to the sump and the other through the kalk stirrer so that they could alternate between the two (as i type thinking of timers????) don't have aquatronica although could probably dig the old iks out (rather not though) any ideas???

[isekiman]

Have you tried just dosing kalk on a night and fresh topup during the day when you have most evaporation, you could do it with timers as you say. HTH. Eric

[subz88]

Are you using an auto top-up system with a peri-pump? If you want to dose a small amount of kalk 24hrs you could use an airline T-piece and couple of extra bits of airline and tee the RO water off before the kalk stirrer, then use a couple of air-line clamps to throttle back the amount of RO entering the stirrer, with surplus RO directly entering the sump.

It might take a bit of fiddling to get a ratio of RO to kalkwasser entering the sump/aquarium that works best for you. No timers needed :)

[zimreef]

and in my opinion too much through the kalk stirrer

What do you base your opinion on? pH too high? If all params OK then I don't think you need to worry. Some people purposely increase their evaporation levels just so they can add more kalk :) .

If you do stil think you need to add less kalk, then I'd be inclined to (i) have the kalk controlled via a water level sensor and (ii) have an RO topup via a peristaltic pump on a cheap timer from B&Q. That way, you can add RO during the day (or whenever) and any shortfall be made up automatically from the kalk stirrer and then turn the RO top-off automatically overnight (or whenever) so evaporation is replaced by just the kalk. Will require a little messing around to set up peri flow rates first of all, but should work.

HTH

John

[jiffy176]

why not have two auto top up. one on at day and the other at night.on timers or....

Kalk say all the time as slow and then the 2nd comes on say once an hour for 10 mins to help where the other can't provide enough?????

Or just get a chiller and evap drops right down.....I think we both know someone who will do you a special price!!!!!:D

[maestro]

its simple,

Get a peri pump and put that on a timer to dose kalk totally independently of the auto top up.

[ANDREW 30]

its simple,

Get a peri pump and put that on a timer to dose kalk totally independently of the auto top up.

I dose kalk for about 10 hours using a fairly slow peri and then topup through tanks illumenated hours with my auto topup. Both on timers, pretty much as above!

Andrew

[peterp]

I control top up by aquatronica controller.
But I dose kalk by a separate pH controller.
I use an industrial pH controller which allows me to put in a set point of say pH 8.05 and this will switch on the dosing at 7.95 and turn off at 8.10 (at any time of day) I dose kalk from a 5ltr bottle and with the level control at it set point I can never over fill.
This keeps the tank at between pH 7.95 and 8.3ish with a dKH of about 10.
I know I could do the same with the aquatronica but why buy the pH probe & interface plus another plug bar that I would need when the system I have got works

pete