Automatic salt

[bmann213]

In the constant drive towards automation for aquariums, has anyone ever created or heard of an automatic dry salt doser or hopper of some type?

 

[James M]

There is automatic water change system, that is a great idea though

 

[User]

This comes up a fair bit.

The issue is correct dosing, and keeping the salt dry so it doesn’t clump and clog the hopper.

 

[reefwiser]

The easiest way is to measure your salt out in pre-weighed amounts. This is done by products like Two Little Fishes salt which comes in bags premeasured for 5-gallon buckets. You can do this your self with a bag sealer I do food production automation an I do dry mix automation for a living and you could not afford to do this in reality at a hobbyist level. The system I work with cost 5 million dollars to build.

 

[Blue Spot Octopus]

I kinda of envisioned, stay you have a tall container, you put just enough for 5 gallons at every 5 gallon mark, so when the water rises slowly it can mix it. So your container would have cups on the side of the container holding the salt .

 

[User]

The easiest way is to measure your salt out in pre-weighed amounts. This is done by products like Two Little Fishes salt which comes in bags premeasured for 5-gallon buckets. You can do this your self with a bag sealer I do food production automation an I do dry mix automation for a living and you could not afford to do this in reality at a hobbyist level. The system I work with cost 5 million dollars to build.

But how do you automatically set up something to cut open the bag and pour it into your container?

I think that’s the big stumbling block

 

[User]

I kinda of envisioned, stay you have a tall container, you put just enough for 5 gallons at every 5 gallon mark, so when the water rises slowly it can mix it. So your container would have cups on the side of the container holding the salt .

So how do you automatically refill the cups with salt once the water is used up?

I think OP is thinking more along lines of/ m-

Dump 200 gallons worth of salt in a container, have machine make 4 x 50 gallon batches of water that auto water changes, he refills hopper once a month

 

[reefwiser]

I did auto water changes for years the issue is it doesn’t get in an get the tank really clean like when you do a siphon water change. You end up having to do that also. Many people don’t have the space for holding large tanks of water. I have a whole garage for a fish room.

 

[User]

I did auto water changes for years the issue is it doesn’t get in an get the tank really clean like when you do a siphon water change. You end up having to do that also. Many people don’t have the space for holding large tanks of water. I have a whole garage for a fish room.

Yeah, but I think OP is talking about automating the mixing process.

The 4 minutes it takes me to transfer water to lower barrel, cut open a bag and dump it in, then walk away sure is a huge drain on my time. If I automated it, I could use that 4 minutes to scrape and siphon about 1/5 of my sump... [emoji12][emoji12]

 

[bmann213]

More so thinking along the lines of automatic water changes and having a mixing tank that has a salinity reader on it and maintains the salinity with a PID controller that when the salinity drops below setpoint it starts adding salt until set point is met. Maybe like using an automatic fish feeder to add the salt. I can see keeping the salt from clumping up being an issue though.

 

[bmann213]

.

 

[Blue Spot Octopus]

I guess it depends what the OP means to be automatic even assembly lines need need input. So I guess my idea will not work to much trouble. How bout a Hour Glass of sorts, but again it will take work to figure it out.

 

[lnevo]

For a while what I was doing was adding more salt than needed and controlling a solenoid to add more RO to the water until it went down to to the right salinity. It worked well but took a long time because of how much the parameter would swing, you need to give time to stabilize adding only a small amount at a time.