My DIY Automatic Water Changes

[jagillham]

When I decided to go down the EI route, I knew one thing certainly was going to take the fun out of it, and that was the weekly 50% water changes!

My tank is nearing 400l, and the rim stands almost 1.5m from the floor. The thought of syphoning 8 full 25l jerry cans out, followed by filling & lifting the same again each week was not my idea of fun…

There are various DIY threads for water changes online, but most are not aimed at the planted aquarist. Especially for those using EI, where we need one large change weekly. Many shown online use a trickle system, where water is constantly added to the tank 24/7.

The good news is that for many people you can fairly easily & cheaply take all the strain out of the manual labour. If your floor is not concrete, or your tank is near an external wall, there is good chance you can replicate this. Luckily for me, my house is a Victorian terrace, which means there is a handy void under the floor for running pipes. Plumbing these days is all “push fit” and compression joints, so anybody can do it. Equally you could get a plumber in if you wanted.

Below is how I currently have the tank set up. On mine everything flows into the sump, but you don’t need one to do something similar. Critically the system is flood and drought proof! The tank overflows into the sump, and the sump in turn overflows to the drains.


At the moment a water change is as simple as…

- Turn off the sump return pump / powerheads
- Open the valve on the tank standpipe (shown in brown)
- Come back at my leisure (safe in the knowledge the tank can only empty as low as the top of the standpipe)
- Close the valve on the stand pipe
- Dose water conditioner into the tank
- Open the valve on the mains inlet (shown in grey)
- Come back at my leisure (safe in the knowledge that once the tank is full it will just flow to the drains)

Key:

Red / Orange: Standing 'herbie' overflow system
Purple: Sump return pipe
Brown: Draining standpipe
Green: Sump overflow to drains
Grey: Mains water in

The Tank Running As Normal


The Tank Once Drained



I'll compile a parts / method list later when I have time.

What I am planning on doing next is automating this whole process so the water changes itself weekly regardless of if I’m home or not. More on that to follow…

 

[jagillham]

No pics ?

New forum that converts linked photos to attachments seems to have broken them! Just waiting to find the fix...

EDIT: Should be fixed now?

 

[ian_m]

How are you going to automatically vacuum the detritus on the bottom of the tank, the crud that collects on the plants etc ? Water changes is much more than just changing water. Arguably, if you had the choice between changing 50% water or vacuuming the detritus, vacuuming would be considerably better. If you don't remove the detritus, it will rot, contaminating the water very quickly, making even more frequent water changes necessary.

There was someone who invented an automatic "jet" that traversed along the top of the tank squirting water to lift up the detritus and "waft clean the plants" during automatic water change. Also had multiple power heads that came on as well to stir up the tank. Had major problems due to water level issues, either didn't refill properly or drained too much, so was never really "unattended".

 

[jagillham]

The idea is not to make the tank entirely maintenance free, but to automate it to a useful degree. I'll need to vacuum ofcourse, but not necessarily weekly. Certainly not 200l worth of vacuuming anyhow.

The power head idea is interesting, having an oversized one to do a few blasts and get everything up moving is not something I'd thought of myself.

The beauty of my design (IMO) is the method does not physically allow either too much drain (it can only drain down to the level of the stand pipe) nor too much fill (as the overflow prevents the flood). You could leave the tank draining or the inlet on all day, and no flooding or emptying would occur.

 

[Ajm200]

We use a pond pump on our tank to drain it down. We attach it to the glass wall of the tank at the level we want to drop the water to. We turn the pump on to get a siphon going then turn it off is the plug and let the water siphon out slowly. The water won't drop below the pump. Pump cost £12 and the hose was £5. Cheap and simple,

We attach the gravel vac to another length of hose to clean the substrate, plants etc. Usually we only need to remove a large trug of water to get rid of all the muck. The pump siphon handles the other 100l or so.

The refill is my one guaranteed opportunity to relax with a hot coffee and do nothing as my young children leave me alone to watch the tank refill.

 

[foxfish]

I can't see your pictures but if you have a sump and a mains water supply connected to an auto top up ball valve, then water changes should be extremely easy using a variety of pumped or syphon methods.
I use an RO 6mm mains water feed to a RO ball valve, they are very small, neat and cost about £10!

 

[LondonDragon]

Images sorted, seems to be an issue with photobucket images!