Auto Water Change - I did it!
This one was on my list from the first month of my tank. After reviewing everyone else’s work on this (in particular,
@SuncrestReef), I struggled through water changes knowing that this could be easier. Here is my quick list of why I needed this:
1.) Stability - changing out a 1-3 gallons per day slowly is great to keep my hands out of the tank and impact the corals less.
2.) Automation - Not being home often means that I want things to be easy so that I can set and forget. With ~65 gallons, I can go about 4-6 weeks without having to worry about mixing salt.
3.) Having plenty of RO and freshly mixed saltwater is heavenly for maintenance tasks.
I was disappointed by how much a water change station and an Apex Dos with all of the necessary plumbing would cost. By my estimate, this was going to cost $1300-$1500. Here are a few tips that saved me some dough. I hope they can help others:
1.) You can order PVC that is clean and in custom colors from Home Depot. This way, if you order too much, it’s easy to return
. This also helped me because I can use Amex points to buy Home Depot gift cards. Ordering the PVC and 6 gate valves from there saved me about $150 (when you consider all of the misc parts I needed to add to complete this station.
2.) I bought my 65G holding tanks from Blain’s. While the store closest to me did not have them in stock, I could use their online system to see that one across the state did. So I had them transfer it. Before they even called me I could see that they arrived using their website inventory - very cool. These were roughly $115 each and no freight fees.
3.) I build the stand out of wood. Finding a metal stand that could support this weight was difficult for under $200. So I used my HD gift cards to purchase ~$40 in wood. Literally took me 2 hours excluding painting it. It’s not pretty, but it does the job nicely.
Pics of the final result (please ignore the cords!):
