Auto Water Change to 2nd Tank

[dhof]

For about 8 months now, I've been running a 2nd spare tank in my basement as a frag tank. Trying to keep it simple, whenever I do a water change on my Display Tank, I just throw the dirty water into this spare tank. I let the dirty stuff settle to the bottom of the dirty bucket, and pump the clear(ish) water through a filter sock into the 2nd spare tank. I have an overflow on the 2nd spare frag tank that goes to an empty bucket, and I just empty that bucket whenever it fills up. It's actually been working pretty good as a place to hold my overgrowth frags from my DT, and grow them out until I make it to the LFS to give them to him.

I have 3 trochus snails in the 2nd spare tank, keeping it clean. I also cut a sheet of light diffuser panel to fit the top of the tank, and all the evaporation is caught by the lid so the salinity stays fine without really ever messing with topping off with RODI or anything like that.

Last week, I bought a DOS, and I'm going to start doing continuous Automatic Water Changes. Instead of dumping the dirty line to a drain, I'm just going to run the dirty DT water line to the spare frag tank. Eventually the spare frag tank water will overflow into the bucket and I'll just pump that overflow bucket water to the drain.

I think this is going to let me have 2 separate tanks far away from each other at relatively similar nutrient/chemistry levels, without any additional work or maintenance. If this works well, I think this might be a good way to keep 2 tanks in decent parameters even if they are on separate floors. The theory is that the waste from the DT is probably enough nutrients and alk/cal/mg to keep the 2nd tank in pretty good shape too, but without having to dose the 2nd tank, plumb it to the same sump, or run an entirely separate sump.

Maybe people are already doing this, but most often I hear they are just emptying the dirty water line to a drain. If this works, it could really be a viable way to have a 2nd tank in a far away living room or something like that.

Here's a diagram of what I'm trying to do here:

Just thought I'd share the idea...

 

[Auquanut]

Sounds feasible to me. The only concern I would have is evaperation from the second tank. The ATO would keep the level of the second tank up constantly, but any evaperation would drive up the salinity because you're not having to top off with RO.

 

[dhof]

Sounds feasible to me. The only concern I would have is evaperation from the second tank. The ATO would keep the level of the second tank up constantly, but any evaperation would drive up the salinity because you're not having to top off with RO.

I put a tight-fitting lid on the 2nd tank, made of that light diffuser stuff from a home improvement store. the light diffuser top doesn't warp like acrylic does. I've been running it for about 8 months like this and have only had to mess with adding a little RODI once or twice.

 

[Auquanut]

Yep. Says so in your first post. Don't know how I missed it. ;Facepalm It really does seem like a good idea to me.
I'm in the process of gathering the equipment to set up an AWC on my 125. I'm also in the planning stages of setting up a FOWLR tank beside it. As the FOWLR won't need to be as "clean", I wonder if I could do something similar. I would have to figure out a way of compenstaing for evap though. The FOWLR would have a sump, skimmer, etc...