Thanks everyone for your input. Very helpful so far.
Perhaps a little more context would be helpful. I am consolidating all my tanks into two larger tanks- I no longer have the bandwidth for more. One is a Red Sea peninsula 500, which will be my sole reef tank. The other is a Red Sea 250, which will be my sole high tech planted tank. I bought them used and am selling my existing tanks to finance them. I was hoping to set up the same water change plumbing for both, but based on your answers, I may have to rethink that based on your inputs - for high tech planted tanks, weekly 50% water changes are a minimum. One reason for wanting a cleaner DT is that these will be in the living room and rec room, so ability to bring in hoses and access to bathrooms is limited. So I want to set up plumbing from the basement to enable me to do the water changes without having to haul buckets.
@mike550 said:
It sounds like you’re describing an auto water change system. If you take water out from where it enters your sump and add back at the return pump then presumably your exchange could be infinite.
I hadn’t thought of this. I think you are talking about something like Neptune DOS. Perhaps for the saltwater tank I can use this where I do 2-3% changes per day. For emergency large changes, I suppose I can run the DOS until the sump empties, then refill the sump, and then empty it again and so on. Bit cumbersome and inefficient but at least doable. I wonder how quick these pumps are - I.e. would it be feasible to do a 30% water change in a reasonable amount of time?
@Joekovar said:
If you can hide a small utility pump inside the display, you can use that to bring more water into the sump after you've drained the sump.
Cool idea, but I’d have to think about how to make it idiot proof so that I don’t overflow the sump by mistake, which as
@Quietman suggests is a real possibility.
@tsouth said:
Fill five 5 gallon buckets of new water
Unfortunately not a real option. The reason is, carrying buckets from the basement will quickly get old, and I know from experience I’ll start skipping water changes and then everything will go downhill. One of the main reasons why I am trying to do the water change plumbing is I always loose when I go against my own nature
.
@Quietman said:
Without setting up an auto water change that adds and subtracts without need to shut off return or doing a few 15% in sequence - which is what you would probably do in emergency- I wouldn't add uncontrolled or "accidentally left on" flow from DT.
You hit it right on the none re my main concern with even the pump from the salt water (or remineralized RODI in the case of planted) to the sump. All it takes is a few minutes of distraction. And frankly my wife would kill me if I flooded the living room with salt water. So perhaps I should look into level sensors to shut off the pumps as a further insurance. It’ll be a bit of a challenge since my water station is 25 feet away and a floor below the tanks. I’ll have to think about how to communicate from the sensor in the display tank to the pump in the salt water tank. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
