top off

[jc]

I need a way to top off my sump because I am getting tired of adding water manually. I would like to incorporate this into a way to keep my calcium at a good level. Can someone recommend a good kalk mixer or calcium reactor. My tank is 90 gallons and has mixed corals.

[matt]

A calcium reactor doesn't have anything to do with top off; it recirculates tank water. A kalkwasser mixer (kalkreactor) can function as auto top off. The most reliable way to do this is with a peristaltic dosing pump. The best ones I've found are either the innovative aquatics.com pumps or the "litermeter."

If you're using R.O./D.I. water for top off rather than kalk, you can set up a float switch or sensor arrangement in your sump connected either directly to your R.O. filter or to a small powerhead in a container of R.O. water. You shouldn't really do this with a KW reactor because you'll tend to dose too much at one time, and if it were to fail in some way, like stick on, you could kill your whole tank. If you have a really reliable sensor, meaning not float switch controlled, you might trust that to add KW from a container, but then you're talking about leaving a powerhead constantly immersed in KW, and it will tend to get clogged quickly.

I have a good kalkreactor set up; if you want to see it, PM me and you can come over. I also have a good SS sensor auto top off system; it's three sensors, a solenoid, and shut off valve for the R.O. filter. This would be about the most reliable way to hook up your filter directly to your sump. Since I decided to use the peristaltic pump, I'm not going to use the auto top off set up and I'd be happy to sell it.

[jc]

My tank is in the bedroom so I can't hookup the r/o to the tank. I would need to use a resevoir to top off my tank. I guess my best option would be to use an auto topoff system and a seperate calcium reactor.

[Dozer]

personally I like a reservoir better anyway. IMO it limits potential disasters to only be as big as the size of the reservoir. My RO/DI unit is in a different room from my tank also. The den with the RO/DI unit has a 30 gallon Rubbermaid Brute garbage can being fed by the RO/DI. The autotopoff line runs from the Brute, through a wall, along the baseboards behind some furniture in my bedroom and then through another wall into the living room where it comes out behind the tank and goes into it.

It's worked well so far. I realize 20-30 gallons of water would still be a pretty bad disaster, but I have nightmares of being gone for a couple days and coming home to several hundred gallons of water in the living room...

[matt]

This is a nice thing about using a good peristaltic pump. It's basically impossible to flood your sump unless you: 1)set the pump way too high, and 2)pay absolutely no attention to it for days.

The drawback with my pump is if the power goes off, the pump goes off and will not come back on; that's a safety feature that the medical pumps have. It's still better than having the pump keep pumping when the power goes off (battery back up) because then if you have a power outage of any length the pump will continue dosing KW into your sump, then when the power comes back on, all that KW will get circulated into your tank at once. You can buy an adapter for some of the medical pumps that will put the pump into a "hold" cycle when the power goes off and then start pumping when the power comes back on.

The other small drawback to the pump is that it's not a true "auto" top off; instead you estimate your evaporation and set the pump to match. With weather changes, your tank's evaporation will go up and down a little, and the pump will not automatically adjust to that. My experience, though, is that you can come really close to getting it right on the money, and occasionally might have to add a small amount of water to keep your sump level exactly where you want it.

[jc]

I don't think I can convince my wife to let me run water tubes through the house. I already screwed up and spilled lots of water on the hard wood floor. I was letting the waste water from the r/o unit empty into the washing machine. I totally forgot and left to have lunch with some friends and I only remembered when I was in traffic on my way home. I messed up the floor around the laundry room. What I need is something like a 5 gallon bucket to put inside the stand next to the sump. What is the best type of sensor to use in the sump so that I can get the water from the bucket into the sump? Then my next problem is finding a good calcium reactor so that I don't have to keep adding 2 part solution. Any suggestions for a tank that is only 90 gallons.

[SBreef]

Tunze osmolater!
http://www.tunze.com/149.html?&L=1&C=US&user_tunzeprod_pi1[predid]=-infoxunter036

[LoneStar]

My tank is in the bedroom so I can't hookup the r/o to the tank.


So is mine.



Tunze osmolater!
http://www.tunze.com/149.html?&L=1& ... oxunter036


And those things rock!!!

I use a 37 gallon Brute trash can with the Tunze Osmolator. Works like a charm. The Osmolator is a little expensive but is by far THE BEST piece of equipment I have purchased in this hobby. It is very percise, using a optical sensor for detecting the water level. It has a fail safe float switch if the water level rises too high. This float switch will turn off the pump and turn on a alarm (about as loud as a smoke detector) so if anyone is home they know theres a problem. If the meter pump runs longer than 15 minutes straight it will shut off (safety measure if a sensor should fail). Accurate within a few millimeters.

[jc]

The tunze looks like what I need. Tell me if this is correct: A kalk reactor just sits there and keeps the kalk mixed until water is added to it thereby forcing mixed water into the sump where it tops off and adds calcium. A calcium reactor takes water from the tank continuously and adds calcium to it by a reaction with media and co2, then slowly returns it to the tank with no top off.

[matt]

The tunze looks like what I need. Tell me if this is correct: A kalk reactor just sits there and keeps the kalk mixed until water is added to it thereby forcing mixed water into the sump where it tops off and adds calcium. A calcium reactor takes water from the tank continuously and adds calcium to it by a reaction with media and co2, then slowly returns it to the tank with no top off.

This is basically right; the only thing is that a kalkreactor has a stirring pump which you need to hook up to a timer. Mine is set to come on for 3 minutes every six hours. You push R.O. water into the kalkreactor, which is always filled, and so it goes into the sump. Your description of the calcium reactor is right. Everyone who has the tunze top off seems to love it, but you can't use it for KW as far as I know because the kalk will ruin the submersible pump that comes with the tunze, but maybe someone has had some experience with it. I also don't think you can use it to push water through a kalkreactor, but maybe you could. The dosing pump you could use to dose KW from a reservior without the reactor and do your top off that way. The pump sits outside the reservoir and the KW only touches the inside of the tubing.

KW will do lots of nice things for your tank; it keeps the ph really high and provides calcium and alkalinity in a balanced solution. A calcium reactor will do the same, but does not have the ph benefits. But, a calcium reactor is capable of replenishing a much higher amount of calcium and carbonate to a tank with a big calcium demand. If you have really bright (mh) lights with a lot of fast growing stony corals, a calcium reactor might be best for you, but if your tank is mostly soft corals and fish, probably a KW set up would work fine, and then you get the ph advantage. There's no reason you can't run both, other than the expense. Personally, I think all reef tanks benefit greatly from using KW as your top off water.

I was asked recently to design a possible calcium supplementation set up for a 250,000 gallon reef tank; that would be several very large calcium reactors capable of processing ALOT of media and CO2. In a situation like that, it's not practical to drip KW!

[Wryknow]

I have the Tunze auto-top off and use a Kalk reacot in combination with it. The Tunze pump sits in my resevoir (A 44 quart dog-food storage container from Petsmart.) When the pump kicks on it pushes water into my PM 660 Kalk reactor (which I really love and holds a TON of kalk) and then up and into the overflow box in my tank. I put a check-vave in the line in between the pump and the Kalk-reactor to prevent a back-siphon and everything has been working fine for a month now.

[LoneStar]

Even if you do end up with a problem with the metering pump on the Tunze Osmolator....they are only $15 or so to replace.....fairly cheap. I have seen people on RC go a year or more when hooked up to a Kalk Reactor without a check valve. Just something to think about.