Neptune Doser for water changes

Icaros · May 27, 2017

Has anyone used a Neptune Doser for water changes. If yes any pics on set up.

brett_schn · May 27, 2017

I don't but I would use a 2 5 gallon buckets. One for good water one for bad water

dunc101 · May 27, 2017

I've been using it for about 1.5 years now. I got it a couple of months after it came out. It's worked flawlessly and I'll never have a tank without an automatic water change setup again! I have it change out about 1.1 gallons over the course of the day in my 80 gallon reef.

miPapareef · May 27, 2017

@dunc101 how is it plumbed? What's your holding tanks? What's the maintenance? Any key learnings after 1.5 years?

andrew james · May 27, 2017

I run 3 dos units. I use 3 pumps for 3 part 1 for ATO and 2 for auto water change. Ive been chaning out 6 gallons per day for about a year and 3 gal per day for ato. Only downside is ive had to replace 2 heads from wear and replace the lines. Other issue for me is im pumping water up from my crawl space so in the winter lines can freeze. I get around this by making the change continuous so it never has a chance to freeze.

BoomCorals · May 27, 2017

I change 2 gallons per day with my DOS. Total system volume is about 330 gallons. Works great. New salt water reservoir is a 32 gallon brute. Old water gets dumped outside via my basement sump.

emvanburen · May 27, 2017

Using the dos (have 3) for 2 weeks now. Love it and will never go back to manual water changes. Also the ability to create a program to add 2L of nsw or remove 2L of OSW to help with tweaking salinity. I'm using it also as a continuous ato until my spectrapure ato arrives and that works well too. Once I free up that channel I'll put it on Mg. They are awesome - but big and expensive. Trade offs.
I ran poly lines (1/4 would have been better than the 3/8 I used) to my basement water tanks and sink. Really pleased w the interface as well. And they hook up to poly lines fine if you dip the poly in a cup of hot water first.

jkapit · May 27, 2017

I use it for 3gal per day water change, total tank volume is 225 gallons. Works great.

I take the saltwater from a 150 gal resevior with a magnetic float switch on the bottom of the resevior at the 10 gallon mark, when low it shuts off the DOS water exchange. I then turn off the water exchange DOS, refill the reseviour. Since I am using reef crystals, dump three bags of salt mix into the filled reseviour, mix the salt and get perfect salinity and turn the water exchange DOS back on. I din't have to scoop or measure the salt which I like.

Very happy with this setup. Even if I have to replace the pumps heads every year its still a great solution IMO.

dunc101 · May 27, 2017

miPapareef said:
@dunc101 how is it plumbed? What's your holding tanks? What's the maintenance? Any key learnings after 1.5 years?

I made a quick video of my setup for you. I use a 30 gallon brute to store my new salt water with a cheap powerhead that is running 24/7 to stir the water. The dos pulls from it and places it in the tank while at the same time the other head pulls "old" salt water from my sump and dumps the waste into the back of one of my toilets. I just bought some rigid vinyl tubing from home depot to connect to dos. I believe it's like $.25 a foot.