Automatic Water Changes

[joeyh51]

I've always wondered about automatic water changes, to have a tank that you never have to do water changes every week and that is totally self sufficient (bar gravel vaccing, maintenance etc) but I've never quite figured out how, or what equipment you'd use to do this.

Are there any products or pieces of equipment out there that allow you to do this? Or is it a case of plumbing in pipes etc?

If anyone has a setup like this, or knows of one any info/pictures, that would be amazing as I'd love to sort something like this out.

Cheers

 

[tribalbrit]

I would think you could have an internal power head piped up to a drain or outside, wire this to a timer to switch on when required, then you'd need a ball valve or float connected to a header tank or reservoir of some kind to refill as the power head pumps out. You would also need an over flow in case of mishaps.

Or refill via a motorized valve connected straight to the water supply, also on a timer and with a float to close the valve when full.

 

[DrRob]

Works better on a sump set up.

Timer to pump to drain to drain some water off.

Then....

Float switch, reservoir (or filtered mains connection), pump (if not mains connected). Ideally also on a timer for not long after the first one.

Otherwise you could probably use a slow trickle from 2 peristaltic pumps, one in, one out, from a reservoir, into the drain or another reservoir.

 

[ParadiseGuerrero]

doesn't T1Karmann have this on his huge tank? I seem to remember reading about the automatic water changes in his thread

 

[DrRob]

Aye, he uses HMA water filters from collins.

 

[littlenemo]

you have to plum it in i have one on my sump tank here is my design

it took a while

 

[The Taffy Apple]

Slow trickle gets my vote
Using a gravity fed header tank in combination with a small motor pump or (as littlenemo said above) small powerhead fixed in place. Some sort of tap/faucet , ball and socket valve would be a better choice, but is it possible to drill/cut through glass and retain it's strength?
Good thread though, i got soome old textbooks out from an old job for a quick reminder

Terry.