Cheer mate. Waterbox used to make 4, 7, 10 and 20 gal cubes but they dropped the 4’s and 7’s a few years ago. It’s a shame because they’re awesome little pico tanks. I’m guessing the demand wasn’t high enough for em. The place I found had a single one in stock so I decided to just grab it while I could.
I really like the Nero but it’s definitely overkill for a pico. I run mine permanently on 1% and even then I’ve put rock in front to slow it down. It’s annoying because the built in “Feed Mode” can’t go lower than 1% so the modes completely useless to me. I’ve message AI asking them to update the firmware so Feed Mode is configurable and I can drop it to zero. They said they passed it on to their developers so I’m assuming nothing will ever come of that lol.
I use the AutoAqua AWC Duo. It’s a stupidly expensive piece of kit - costs more than the AI light, the Nero wave maker or even the tank itself. I’m pretty sure it’s the most expensive piece of equip in my setup! I like it cause it’s fully automated and everything’s integrated. It has two sensors you place in the tank and three small pumps. One pump goes in the freshwater reservoir and handles top off - when the water level drops below the top sensor it triggers and adds fresh to bring the level back to that sensor. For AWC, one pump goes in your sump or tank and drains water down to the lower sensor and the third pump goes in your saltwater reservoir and fills the tank back up to the top sensor. It’s quite a clever little system and because ATO is integrated it automatically deactivates ATO when performing a water change. The pumps it comes with are the same little 12v units that you probably got with your tank and they just plug into the control unit with standard plugs. I’ve actually bought small 12v diaphragm pumps of Aliexpress, wired them up to the right sized plugs and swapped out the stock pumps for them. They pump slower than regular impeller pumps so are more suited for tiny tanks and they are less susceptible to siphons or running dry. Best of all the pumps live outside the water so you don’t have to have an additional pump in your tank or worry about finding a reservoir you can squeeze the pump into. And they’re only like $3 from Aliexpress so I bought a bunch and if they die it’s an easy swap. I’m working on a small enclosure for them to sit on the counter but for now they’re just sitting next to the tank.
There aren’t too many other options for an integrated auto water change setup unless you go for something like an Apex or GHL. I genuinely considered an Apex but every single component is really expensive, a lot of the stuff seems to be really loud, and with so much equipment these days having built in wifi control I couldn’t really justify adding one.
The AutoAqua is really expensive (too expensive downside if I’m being honest) but water changes are the thing I hate most about having a reef tank so if I can minimise the need for me to do them, I’m willing to pay.
The other clever thing you can do is pick up “smart plugs” for the equipment. I have an Amazon Echo in the room and use it to control some of my other hobby equipment so I realised that if I plug the pumps and the Fuge lights and such into a smart plug I can not only use voice commands to trigger them on and off, I can set schedules in the Alexa app to have the devices switch on and off as needed. No more fiddling with mechanical or digital timers, it’s all run through the app and works off the same clock so the sync properly. The one down side is that if the internet goes down, you’ll lose the scheduling ability but the equipment will still run. I use the em for my return pumps so I can schedule them to switch off during the auto water change and it’s a simple button push to switch them off at feeding time. Also have them on my Fuge lighting so they power on and off at night on a schedule.
I’m a big fan of automation and new tech to make things easier for me. My last tank was a big 4 footer almost a decade ago and it lacked any real automation or programmable controls and everything was done manually so maintenance was time consuming. These days you can automate a lot of that and just keep the parts you enjoy.
sorry for rambling, I’m kind of in the middle of setting all this up and testing and configuring so my minds going a mile a minute.
