Cali Kid Corals

Water Exchange Module (Spectrapure) not working?

kinetic

kinetic

Supporting Member
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I'm setting up an auto water change with the Liter Meter III and two exchange modules. Following the instructions, I'm running them on a dry run for 20 minutes. One of the exchange modules is really pumping, I can hear it, see it moving, and all that. The other one, is inaudible unless I stick my ear right on it, doesn't really move, and feeling the output, no air or anything seems to be moving.

I tried swapping which plug, but same result.

Any ideas? Did I get a bum one? I also have zero experience with these dosing thingies.
 
well, fiddled around for awhile, but as soon as I turned off pump A, pump B started kicking in. Can only turn on one pump at a time? That seems odd? Shouldn't they both be going at the same time?
 
The litermeter only runs one pump at a time. It will turn each module on serially one after another. I used to think it was odd too, but really it makes no difference because you are exchanging small, regular amounts of water, so the impacts on salinity are minimal.

Also remember to check the float switch if your pump doesn't work. I've overlooked that in the past too.
 
the float switch isn't attached, I wonder if that actually works, I'll try it out.

I'm mixing my 50g of saltwater now, and will probably run a calibration run to see how it does.
 
Things went well today, calibrated the two pumps fairly easily. For some reason I had a 500mL beaker laying around, so calibration was simple and accurate. Pumping from the basement up gave me a rate of 197, and pulling down from the tank down to the drain was 240 or so. Makes sense I guess.

I put a small "frag" container full of water, cut two holes on the lid, and put in the two lines, one from the saltwater mix resevoir, the other goes to the drain. I'll leave it and check on it tomorrow night to see if the water level is the same. If it is, I think I'm ready to go. The top is on pretty good, so I hope evaporation won't skew anything.

I'm crossing my fingers!
 
I also set the flow rate to 5.41 (liters/day). That'll give me about 10 gallons of water change a week, which is good since my total volume is just about 100g.
 
kinetic said:
I also set the flow rate to 5.41 (liters/day). That'll give me about 10 gallons of water change a week, which is good since my total volume is just about 100g.
Click to expand...

Now wait. You may exchange 10g a week, but it's not the same as a once off 10g change since you are removing and adding at the same time ;) You're actually partially removing what you are putting in thus lowering the effectiveness of the 10g change. If it was me, I'd up that amount a bit more...
 
What Gresh says is true, but the effects are very small. Randy Holme Farley wrote up a great article on water changes and if you go to the bottom of the article he notes that if you did a 30 gallon water change on a 100 gallon system via a continuous system (like the LM3) it would be the same effect of doing a one time 26% water change.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-10/rhf/index.php
 
hmm interesting, he didn't really say how he came to the 26%, but I totally understand why. I'll up it to about 20G of water every week and see how that goes.
 
He does explain the math of how he comes to the 26% number if you go to the section "Size of Water Changes: A General Case".
 
Eight said:
He does explain the math of how he comes to the 26% number if you go to the section "Size of Water Changes: A General Case".
Click to expand...

Oh cool! Eight is thorough, he reads! We need more people like you ;)
 
Hahaha... If you've read "Tipping Point", I'm the "Maven" personality type. i.e.: I incessantly research *everything* about anything I'm interested in. :)

The effectiveness of continuous water changes was something that really bugged me when I was researching the Litermeter. Randy's calculation and proof of how effective continuous changes are sold me on the purchase.
 
I haven't read it, but if there's a type for: "Lazy who likes to wait for others to figure it out first, then jump on the bandwagon," that'd be me =)

I try not to though of course ;) I'll go read that part of the article, thanks for looking out!
 
came home to check out the test container, almost completely dry! Darn, pump B (resevoir to sump) did not fire. Anyone have any ideas?

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1703229

Posted a detailed question in the above post.
 
So I swapped the pumps and recalibrated, the rates were slightly lower, but running them at high FLOW, like 46 liters per day, it showed that it was indeed drawing out the same water as it was adding. So it seems to be OK. I moved it back down to 06.41 l/day. If it goes well, I'll add it to the real sump tomorrow.

I can't figure out, however, how to connect that sensor tube vinyl tubing to the polythelene tubing... will the regular union fitting work on vinyl?
 
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