# Planning a saltwater mixing station in my closet



## aquaticlog (Mar 24, 2012)

Not surprisingly I am getting somewhat tired of changing water in my 100 gallon, and I do it weekly. The night before a water change I would take 2 five gallon buckets and fill them with RO water, then I put powerheads into each one of them and a heater, add salt and wait a few hours. Next morning I syphon water out into 2 more buckets and then top off with saltwater.

Well, it is time to ease things up a bit. I am not ready to setup a fully automated water change system, but I want to get rid of the buckets and instead use the hose. My reef aquarium sits in my living room and all of my fish equipment and RO system is in the closet about 25 feet down the hall. They are on the same floor level (but there are a couple of steps in between, so nothing can be rolled from point A to point B).

I would like to make things as easy as possible and hope for your help in this. I am currently making 10 gallon water changes each week, but would prefer to do at least 15 gallons at once and plan for a larger tank in the future.

Here's what my closet looks like:



I am thinking adding two 40 gallon plastic vertical containers with lids. One will obviously be with RO water and the other will be mixing salt.

I've seen quite a few different ways to plumb these, can anyone recommend the following:

What is the best way to plumb these two containers?
What type of piping is preferable? Which diameter?
I need to be able to get RO water to Saltwater container, which pump would I need? Would I be using the same pump to send water to the reef tank?
Ideally I would want to be able to send RO water to the tank as well, since my ATO is next to the tank.
Which pump would I need to get the water out of the reef aquarium?
How can I make sure that the amount I've syphoned out is the same as what I'm about to put in? (I have a laundry sink nearby, so I could use it as a temporary place to measure syphoned out water).

Thanks!


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## Flexin5 (Nov 12, 2011)

I think I can shed some light here, granted I'm no expert on setups like this. I was thinking about doing something like this in a nearby closet but it was too big of a pain with no water, power or drainage in there.

- for plumbing the two tanks together, you can run a bulkhead at the bottom, piece of PVC and a valve to another bulk head on the other tank. Then just turn on the pump and open the valve when you want water to go to the other holding tank. It's only 40 gallons so a maxijet 1200 can move that in short time.

-for piping some 3\4inch PVC should be fine and it'll move 40 gallons easily.

-I think you can do like one pump to move the RO water to the mixing tank, close the valve and put a T fitting and another valve to the tank pump. Just open that Valve off the T fitting when you want to flow new SW into the tank. Which pump you'll need I'm not sure something that can move water 25ft. 

- for ato how do you have it setup now? You just have to put a pump in the RO tank connected to wherever you float switch is (sump?) 

- for water out of the tank, just use a maxijet 1200. Have it drain into the sink. For how much you need to drain, measure out 10gallons in buckets and draw a line on the sump so you know how much to drain, then draw a max fill line where the water line was before you drained it.


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## altcharacter (Jan 10, 2011)

50Seven has the best setup for water changes I've ever seen. If you're ever near the uxbridge area hit him up to see it.

What he's done is setup a few smaller plastic drums (20g if I remember correct) and put them in-line near his sump. So his RO/DI is filling up drum #1 on a ATO all the time and Drum #2 is mixing saltwater. Everything is hooked up on pumps and ball valves so when he has to change the saltwater he turns on the pump to pump water out of drum #2 into the MT via PVC piping (or might be vinyl) then once it's empty he turns a ball valve from drum #1 to #2 and then it's filled. Then #1 fills up with RO water again. 

Hopefully he can take pics of it so you can see what I'm talking about. The guy never touches water....boooooooo!!


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