And to add, do you have a video or step-by-step on how you modified the fridge?
I don't have a video but it's in my build thread. I'll also give an overview here:
Objective: to autodose liquid Reef Nutrition food 4-5x per day for wrasses and also to ensure fish are fed over the weekend (office tank).
Food: Mixture of Reef Nutrition Oyster Feast, ROE, Tigger Pods, Arcti Pods (retired), Pac Pods (retired), Roti Feast (retired), Phyto Feast, and Mysis Feast (switched to manual due to clogging issues)
Concept: Pump liquid food inside of refrigerator and flush out of tube with RODI into the tank.
Initial tank setup with mini fridge in cabinet:
Set up shelf and wire nest above fridge:
Drill 3 holes in top of refrigerator: (1) power supply hole, (2) AFR tube hole, (3) Food tube hole. Pass tubes/wires through holes. Seal holes with silicone glue.
* This is a bit messy, because there is foam insulation that you pass through that disintegrates. I also was a bit too zealous in the drilling and made the holes a bit too wide on the underside and had to use a massive amount of silicone on the inside.
Everything back in the cabinet. ATO goes next to the fridge.
Hook up the tubes for the doser. There are three heads on this one. Head #1 is AFR, which I mix and place in a small tub with lid, hold drilled through lid to let tube through and allow air to vent. Head #3 pulls liquid food mixture from the 50mL conical tube in the green tube stand. It push the food through the T barb and stops after 2mL pumped. Then Head #2, which is connected to the lower opening of the T barb and pulls from a tub of RODI water, flushes 15 mL of RODI through the blue tube (which has 2mL of liquid food sitting in it now ).
Up the back of my 40gal AIO tank, over the back chambers, and into the display:
There is space between the mesh lid and the acrylic back panel of the display, which acts as an emergency overflow. I added some plastic mesh used for cross-stitching that I glued with silicone to the overflow to guard from wrasses jumping in the AIO chamber--I also cut out space for the blue tube:
I have a WIFI power strip that turns the return pumps off 2 minutes before the doser starts pumping food, but keeps the gyre in the display going to blow the liquid food throughout the display. The concept works really well and the fish have learned to wait for the food to drop into the tank when the return pumps turn off.
long video, but you get the idea here:
photos.app.goo.gl
I also have an Eheim autofeeder that drops TDO pellets 3x per day about 3 minutes after the liquid food goes in. It sits on a platform dumping over the mesh lid:
(orange tube is the AFR dropping into the return chamber, and large clear tube is ATO dumping into return)
Anyway, happy to answer more specific questions if you've got any! Hope that helps!
www.aquacave.com
