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On my tank the overflow is not adjustable. I have a marine land corner flow. The plate comes off for cleaning but the overflow still works the same way. Hopefully that isn't a limitation for your water changing plans.

So depending on how tank is setup, usually drain will only remove top inch of water from display. On my system it's about 5 gallons. Keep in mind if the power goes out most tanks are designed to only let a minimum quantity goto sump. Nathan

The other thing to think about is even if you setup fast pumps how much do you really expect to get out? My sump is 30g with about 15g in it normally and 20g in feed mode. The sump is 3 compartments so I can probably get 5 to 10g out of it if I let return pump empty it's compartment. Unless you plan on having hose up in display you need to think about benefit unless you plan to do continuos ( add and remove at same time ). I do regular small changes and use ato to top off if I want to syphon sand or something.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-10/rhf/index.php This is a good read. Basically mathematically two half size water changes are almost as efficient as infinitly small water changes where the water is going in and out at the same time. The big jump is when you go from one large change to two smaller. After that the ratios really become small. I think the general thing most quoted is a 30% water change of infinitly small amounts ( even a gallon a day being added / removed at same time ) is equal to a single 26.5% water change. Yeh I know it's old but math doesn't change. The trick is being able to add and remove same quantity with worry of flood or too much. Many people end up using dosing pumps that allow them to measure what they are doing although it's slow. I use DOS. It's about 1 gal per hour. I have 93g cube with about 15g in the sump minus rock. I'm doing currently 3G per night automatic but might drop it to 2 g a night. Runs around 2 am autopilot. All I really do is check water line of mixing station and make more saltwater when it's low. I also have a relay setup on my ATO and spent $20 on an extra Tunzi ato pump. With a flip of a switch my ato goes from rodi to saltwater. It's really nice to switch to saltwater top off if I know I'm doing something taking water out of tank or if I want salinity to slowly increase.

So I really like the idea of plumbing all this, but I will be honest I really love being able to schedule water changes on apex without turning knobs. Hopefully you will have same flexibility. Nathan

My stand (outer dimisions) is only 26" tall. I have a 96g cube tank. Its my understanding if the tanks width and depth is larger than a door frame they try to make height of the stand shorter than the width of a door frame so you can put it sideways and bring it in your house. 26" stand is about 24" inside height. I can tell you short stands suck. Very hard to crawl inside and change filter sock. Also selection of skimmer is very hard. There are so so so so so so so many skimmers that are way way way way way too tall to fit in short stand. I have an AquaMax CS-2 rated for 350g tank. I think its either the only or one of a very short list of skimmers that can fit in less than 24" height and is rated for 300+ gallons. Now why do I need a 300g skimmer in a 100g tank, not going to argue about that lol. Sumps are also very hard to work on. My sump is 16" tall. That allows me a wooping ... 8 inches between the top of the sump and the glass on the bottom of the display. I literally am turning my skimmer sideways after disconnecting it from the pump if i need to take it out to clean it or anything. Super super hard to do anything in sump. As for the display, sure I can walk all the way around the display being 6 feet tall, and I can reach in my tank and touch the sand in maybe half the tank. ( can't do that with the back or the center of the tank). How often do I have to do that? not very often... I have these little claw things on a stick that I usually use to grab/move things instead of reaching my paws in the tank. I think i totally would be up for using a small sturdy step stool if I could get more inches in my stand. My wife has already cleared me to goto a bigger tank (we aren't exactly down to specifics yet), but I have 'authorization' for upto 72" wide, 24" deep, whatever height. (she is inlove with the 210g @ marine scene that they have on sale). I tried 300 DD but she clearly told me going beyond 24" may not be acceptable in living room lol. Anyways my point is this, I really like the marineland 300 DD and it stand, but i'm horrified to find that the stand is a shorty only 24" on inside height just like my exacting 30x30 tank. I have french doors and a clear shot to bring anything i want into my house and set it up but I don't want another short stand. Hopefully a picture clarifies things See the top of the skimmer? Now look at the two drain pipes next to it. Hey those are bulk heads and they are BELOW the top of the skimmer height wise. Now look at the base of the collection cup of the skimmer. Compare that to the height of the sump. Notice they are lined up? Yup have to take the little cap off the collection cup to get it out of the sump. thats why i have an external collection container for skimmer w/ quick disconnect; but i still clean the top of the skimmer once a week. What about one of those automatic skimmer cleaners... dont even think about it lol. Looks like fun eh? --

So here is the system, I made a few adjustments as I was building it and talking with the boss. (my other half). Anyways so, originally I wanted it three levels, with RODI reserve on top, mostly gravity fed, but after some measurements I didn't like the idea of the RODI reserve being above the RODI unit itself height wise. The top is on the top of the tank above/at the top of the water line but still I wanted to be extra careful so I ended up with the two level design that you see. Moving it from three to two levels meant one of the lines would no longer be gravity fed, so I had to purchase an additional pump (to move water from the RODI Reserve to the mixing tank). Another change, was originally it was all going to be plumbed together so I could have the water go directly from RODI to Mixing with the turn of a knob. Taking my wifes suggestion Instead Its ran to flexable piping that can simply be stuck in the big opening on top when i'm adding the salt. I have to open it up to add salt, as far as I know there is no automatic way to have it shoot salt into the mixing container. By doing this, it makes the two sides independent of each other. The left side is salt water, the right side is RODI. The only area the they are plumbed together is the very bottom which is a drain incase I have some need to get all the water out of the system. There are far more true union ball valves on this system then required. At one point I wanted to make the system symmetric. For instance there is a true union ball valve at the connection to every tank that allows me to remove it from the system easily. There are also ball valves near the end of pipe runs (where the pipes are open to allow access to water) to let me close it off and prevent any bugs or anything from getting up in the piping. (this is in my garage) on shelves. The little black caps on three of the tanks are two inch bulk heads with a short piece of pvc dry fit into it, with a rubber cap on it. Basically it allows me to put stuff in the tanks through the 2" bulk head and then have a small slice with a razer blade in the cap to allow a cord or tubing out. For instance on the ATO tank the two cords coming out are the power/water to the tunzi ato. On the salt water ready container, it is also a saltwater ato, plus a tube for the DOS water changing, power to a circulation pump, and a heater for the winter months if i feel i need to warm the water up some. There are many ways to set this up, I intentionally went with using magnetic hydor circulation pumps to mix the saltwater instead of plumbing a circle with an external pump. The small powerheads take far less electricity (like 5 watts vs. 50 watts ) Normally I would have raised the tanks up so they were high enough off the ground to fit a bucket under them, but in this case, I wanted them well below the sump on the other side of the wall so there was no possibility of them siphoning into the house. Because of that I have a small pump to get me some head pressure to get the water into buckets should I want a bucket of ready mixed saltwater. The ato setup pictures were above and it is operational and working. I took out 20 gallons last night from the display and flipped the ato to saltwater, and let it refil the sump. Every 9 minutes I flipped it off and back on, and let the return pump run some so the tunzi wouldn't automatically cut-off at 10 minutes. The only reason I needed the 20 gallons in buckets was to do manual water changes on my other two tanks. (I take the less-nasty water out of my display and move it to fish only QT / HT ). Its in my garage so it doesn't have to be overly pretty but I still want to work on the electrical side to make it a little more tidy. I'm considering getting another EB8 for my apex and putting everything in the garage on it so I can control it with apex. The ATO is setup to fail to freshwater, it only pumps saltwater when there is electricity going to the relay. Feel free to ask any questions or make any suggestions (assuming they are easy for me to fix/change

The system is operational on third batch of saltwater. I was waiting on two remaining parts that should arrive today to call it done and post pics. Currently it is doing 3 gallon automatic water changes every night. I just took 20g manual water change out last night to put 10g into two other tanks and and flipped ATO to s/w and reset Tunzi every 9 minutes and it even "topped off 20g". My old style was one large change monthly 20-30% / gallon and the cleaner of the water would goto fish only qt ( more like observation and medicate only if necessary ).' Currently I have my hospital tank up I noticed some white dots on my copper banded butterfly so he's on his own and getting 50% weekly water changes since hospital is not cycled. Anyways pics will go up soon. Thanks

93g cube about 30x30, 30g sump in bottom (about 15g of water in it), 140g reserves on other side of wall setup with ato / auto water changes. Here is a little more perspective, Overall shot awhile ago (before adding) when the midnight clowns were being introduced from qt. (before nim was added) WP_20150525_10_32_22_Pro.jpg A non-distorted view (from iphone) rather than dropcam at angle, this is maybe a week old: Basically same picture without fullsize ipad. This is one shot of the stuff in the sump, i also have an eletronics cabinet full of apex stuff. This is a work in progress. I'm waiting on a few more parts to arrive and then will post some detail on my DYI thread. The tank is on the other side of this wall hard-wired into these containers. I can switch between fresh/sw ato, and also have it both making new saltwater and doing auto water changes. Its not done so obviously some of the parts aren't fully connected, but it essentially is working. thanks! -Nathan

https://www.dropcam.com/c/27d042575696425ebf52aa8ad374e6bf.mp4 Not sure if link works, however he is doing well. Feeding him 2 silversides every 2-3 days.

The skimmer I think is set appropriate, when its idling it's well below the collection cup. I've never really see it flooding fast. It's producing dark stuff so the color of the skimmate looks correct. If it was wet I would expect it to be a lot more clear. I'm feeding 2 silver sides three times a week to the beasts in my tank plus either apex pellets or myses shrimp. Only what they can consume in about 90 seconds ( twice a day ).

To be continued ..

Plastic Mart delivered the containers UPS Freight. Make sure if you order them you have somewhere a truck and get to. They arrived on a pallet nicely wrapped up. Everything looks in order. I placed them on my shelving and started doing measurements and dry fitting and such to determine the final pipe setup. I made the decision I did not like the RODI reserve being above the RODI so I moved it down to the lower shelf which means the system is no longer gravity fed to go from RODI -> S/W Mixing. I'm going to add a pump so I can turn on the pump when I want to move the water the few feet up to get it into the S/W Mixing. I also decided to go with internal circulation powerheads to mix instead of expensive bulky external pumps. I've seen it down both ways on pictures and forums and it just looks like one of those debatable topics. Honestly as long as salt gets mixed i'm fine with it. The last picture is fabrication of the PVC some of it is glued together some of it is dry fit, some of it remains to be purchased (due to a minor adjustment I'm making to the plan). The switch in the picture obviously switches between S/W and Fresh ATO.

I wired up the relay and second Tunze ATO pump. I can now flip a switch and easily switch between RODI top off and S/W top off. I'm going to make sure no power = RODI top-off so even if something wierd happens it will default to RODI top off. In the future I plan to get conductivity probe and let apex control this. My Skimmer is pulling out 1/2 QT a day so i need to frequently at S/W to salinity doesn't slide. Here are pictures of the construction: image image image The box/plug/wire is from home depot, the relay is from Radio Shack. The extra pump was something like $20 bucks from marine depot. Probably have less than $50 dollars invested to beable to switch between S/W and RODI top-off.

This is what I'm considering. Essentially will use power heads to mix and gravity to get water to different containers.

Here are the tanks I ordered 35 gallon. Also some measurements. The water line in the sump is about 10" in the sump, The living room where the tank is, is about 3" below the ground floor. The ground floor is about 16 inches above the garage and stands lowest setting is 3" above the garage floor. The tank and stand are maybe a foot apart with a wall between the living room and garage. The containers top water line is 19". The stand for the tank has the sump maybe 1" above the floor. Anyways there is a drawing. It looks to me like I'm pretty safe with them on the lowest shelf with maybe 1" to spare to prevent a syphon. Ato will push water in and I'm still trying to decide if I will use apex dos or something else when I do water changes.

I've decided I will mod my tunze ato to do both salt and fresh water. http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1677003&highlight=osmolator+apex+saltwater I keep having salinity issues with the amount of water skimmer is removing. Looks like less than $50 bucks to get the relay and extra osmolator pump. Probably have it manual to start and then get apex conductivity into controlling it. Also thinking about using DOS to do water changes. I'm trying to figure out if bi-monthly 15g (15x2). Vs daily 1 gallon ( 30 or 31 ) is the same. Initially I was thinking pumps to empty half of sump while return is off 15g per change. Now I'm considering automatic 1 g a day.

9 day update, decided to empty locker and clean neck. It's pulling out more junk then before mod. I think 4.25 qt of brown stuff in 9 days is good for 93g cube. So maybe safe to say I'm removing 1/2 qt a day? Not really sure how this compares to others. Last night I fed the beast in my tank two silversides and saw overnight jump in skimmate. I also run filter sock that is replaced every 2 days. Nathan

Question on the ritteri, so I noticed the pink on its bottom sometimes is caught on the rock. ( not its foot ). Is this something it's intending to do to stay open or should I try to carefully get it unstuck? See picture.

Good Morning, I'm upgrading/replacing my saltwater mixing station, and am in the early stages of it. My old station was some brute trash cans with a cheap powerhead in the s/w and I used buckets to tranfer water from one to another, and then buckets to get the water in the house. I noticed slowly but surely junk would accumulate in the bottom of the tanks I think it was from frequnetly opening the trash can lids and the use of buckets (directly dipped into the trash cans) My goal is to have a mixing station where the water is "more sealed" (in that i'm not using buckets to transfer water from one place to another), with the ability to get water out in cleanly through piping fittings, and also optimally the ability to fully plumb it to the tank. What I have currently: 93g cube aquarium directly on other side of wall large adjustable shelving unit installed on other side of wall RODI Unit producing water with plumbing to the shelf Tunzi ATO with plumbing to the shelf and power (on/off) controlled by Apex outlet A small drain line with pump from sump of tank to drian A small line (not in use) from sump to the shelf to auto-fill with saltwater. Horizonal Containers on order from plastic mart Here is the shelf and the space: I decided to go with 35g containers since they will fit nicely on the shelf and also be the right size to cover a "normal" water change on my 93g tank. The current plan is to use four of them. One to hold saltwater that is ready to use One to be mixing saltwater One to hold RODI water One that will be used by ATO. I ended up with four in my design because I want to do a Gravity Fed setup. The top level will be the RODI reserve. The middle level will be the s/w mixing reserve and the bottom level will be both the ready S/W and the ATO reserve side-by-side. I did this because i wanted the S/W and ATO reserves phyiscally lower than the waterline in the sump to insure here is no possibility of an uncontrolled syphon. The outlets to the sump will be positioned slightly above the waterline so it cannot reverse syhon either. The containers have 1" outlets on them, They come fitted with only outlet at the bottom and a large circular top. There is a position on all the containers to add a second 1" outlet. When I ordered them, i ordered extra bulkheads that fit the containers so I can install the second inlet/outlet where desired. The general design on the s/w ones will be to have both outlets installed, and to install a pump between them to circulate/mix the water. The openings are at the bottom, but in the past it seems like salt likes to collect at the bottom the most so I don't think there is to much harm in having the inlet and outlet to the pump on the bottom (but on different sides of the tanks). The other advtange of doing two equal height connections is there is no/little head loss on the pumps so I should beable to either go cheaper on the pumps or get alot more circulation. Need something that I can use with 1" piping, almost zero head loss, for 35 gallons of water. Anyways I will take some pictures of my drawings/designs and let folks give me tips/answer questions obviously. I'll post more pics as a take them. The room is in the garage so frequently the temperature shifts. Even on the coldest day last winter I did not see it go below freezing (I kept checking). I'm not exactly sure how hot it will get in the summer. I'm also planning on geting a few large eheim heaters I can drop in the Ready S/W reserve to quickly heat the water up on the day of water changes. Thanks! -Nathan

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cgja93_nMig Short video of newest addition to tank, some of the fish are still in other tank.

It actually more than I recall closer to 2.25 qt in 6 days. Here is color:

6 days about 1.5 quarts dark brown stuff. Haven't cleaned skimmer or anything since I did install. Seems like it's working. Nitrates: 3 Phosphates: 0.01 Softcorals, polyps, zoas, anemones, and fish. Feeding a little bit more than previously with new addition. Nathan

The color and quantity is obviously dependent on bio load, skimmer model, no how wet or dry its configured so my results will probably be different. Here is some pics of how it is since I added this mod yesterday. I could probably darken it by tuning down skimmer and lighten it tuning it up. All the carbon dosing / vodka / bio pellet / reactor stuff I've read tend to suggest wet skimming rather than dry. I debating buying a new skimmer hopefully moving the reactor output from a couple inches away to directly feeding into skimmer improves things. I'm have about 110 water volume including sump with aquamaxx cones cs2. I'm limited on space, there is a RLSS R8 on sale at quantum with more than twice the air and water speed than what I have now but not really sure if it will in the end make much of a difference or if there is something better that will fit in the space. I have 10" l x 17.25" w x 24.5" h. Baffles set to 9.5" can go beyond 10 inches if that portion is above the 9.5" baffles. Nathan

Am I satisfied ? This is my first skimmer. I don't have a lot of opinion and the grass is always greener on the other side. Personally if I had it to do all over again probably I would do an external recirculating skimmer that was not dependent on depth that had a threaded intake that I could bolt the reactor back onto. I'm also curious about multi speed dc pumps and self cleaning necks. All of this has to do with my skimmer not it's fitting. How is my skimmer doing? It's sucking stuff out of the tank. Maybe 1/2 quart in two days. Is that good ? Nathan