Dosing from garage?

[aaron186]

I’m running RO tubing from my garage to display for auto water changes. I live in Florida. I’m considering running more tubes to dose from my garage too to free up cabinet space. Is this a bad idea? Will I need to replace my tubes eventually? The runs aren’t easy to do and 50 feet of RODI tubing x 3 isn’t cheap. Any other issues I should be aware of?

 

[sdreef]

I’m running RO tubing from my garage to display for auto water changes. I live in Florida. I’m considering running more tubes to dose from my garage too to free up cabinet space. Is this a bad idea? Will I need to replace my tubes eventually? The runs aren’t easy to do and 50 feet of RODI tubing x 3 isn’t cheap. Any other issues I should be aware of?

I have RO tubing routed from my garage to the display for AWC and ATO. The salt water and fresh water reservoirs take up a lot of space and therefore best for the garage. After a few years, no issues with the RO lines.

A few considerations for dosing would be that the dosing solutions are more prone to forming precipitates. I would be concerned the RO tubing would get a blockage along the way and wouldn't be easy to trouble shoot, easy or cheap to fix. For that reason, I only run water through the lines, and personally wouldn't recommend running dosing solutions through these long runs. Dosing solutions and a doser also shouldn't take up quite as much space also although I understand the appeal of freeing up cabinet space.

Definitely do run some extra lines when you go through the effort of passing the initial lines. It's good to have some redundancy. I use an apex controller and use apex dos for the AWC. So I also ran an extra long aquabus cable with the RO lines as well allowing me to locate the DOS in the garage where noise isn't a consideration.

Here's how I set things up in case it helps.

Mixing Station / Automatic Water Change

I have been planning out a 300 gallon build, and wanted to make the maintenance easier and minimize carrying water through the house. So finally put together the mixing station located in my garage and have started using daily automatic water changes with a DOS on my current tank. I routed...

www.reef2reef.com

Remote ATO in Garage

I am in the process of planning out a 300 gallon build and most of my filtration will be located beneath the tank. In order to maximize the space, I wanted to locate the ATO reservoir in the garage which is about 90 feet away. Since I already owned the Neptune ATK V2 for my current system...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Tcook]

This is great information. I am going to run 1/4 RO line along with aquabus from the garage 80 ft through the attic to the tank for AWC. Also 2 runs of 3/8 RO tubing for larger volumes like refilling my ATO vat in the fish room or large volumes of SW. May run it through 1.5" pvc conduit (except the aquabus).

I will use these valves to switch open with the dos to act as check valves.

 

[sdreef]

This is great information. I am going to run 1/4 RO line along with aquabus from the garage 80 ft through the attic to the tank for AWC. Also 2 runs of 3/8 RO tubing for larger volumes like refilling my ATO vat in the fish room or large volumes of SW. May run it through 1.5" pvc conduit (except the aquabus).

I will use these valves to switch open with the dos to act as check valves.

A conduit is a good idea and something I should have probably done in retrospect. I passed the tubes and aquabus all together.

I ended up just pulling water from the main fresh water reservoir in the garage for my ATO. Multiple redundancies in the system including a mechanical float valve to prevent from overfilling which could be one potential issue with such a large ATO reservoir. The main advantages I found were freeing up space by eliminating the need for a separate ATO reservoir as well as the task of refilling it.

I was able to find the best price for RO tubing on amazon few years back.

Here was the long aquabus I used. I used the 125' for my application. Perhaps other alternatives also available now.

Long USB Cable for Apex - 877.522.3779 - USBFireWire.com

Long USB Cable for Apex

www.usbfirewire.com

 

[Tcook]

I should get rid of the ato vat at the tank but still worried about overfilling without human input. I have plenty of optical, electric float, and manual float valves to include enough redundancy but it still makes me nervous. Maybe I should have an actuary calculate the odds

 

[aaron186]

I have RO tubing routed from my garage to the display for AWC and ATO. The salt water and fresh water reservoirs take up a lot of space and therefore best for the garage. After a few years, no issues with the RO lines.

A few considerations for dosing would be that the dosing solutions are more prone to forming precipitates. I would be concerned the RO tubing would get a blockage along the way and wouldn't be easy to trouble shoot, easy or cheap to fix. For that reason, I only run water through the lines, and personally wouldn't recommend running dosing solutions through these long runs. Dosing solutions and a doser also shouldn't take up quite as much space also although I understand the appeal of freeing up cabinet space.

Definitely do run some extra lines when you go through the effort of passing the initial lines. It's good to have some redundancy. I use an apex controller and use apex dos for the AWC. So I also ran an extra long aquabus cable with the RO lines as well allowing me to locate the DOS in the garage where noise isn't a consideration.

Here's how I set things up in case it helps.

Mixing Station / Automatic Water Change

I have been planning out a 300 gallon build, and wanted to make the maintenance easier and minimize carrying water through the house. So finally put together the mixing station located in my garage and have started using daily automatic water changes with a DOS on my current tank. I routed...

www.reef2reef.com

Remote ATO in Garage

I am in the process of planning out a 300 gallon build and most of my filtration will be located beneath the tank. In order to maximize the space, I wanted to locate the ATO reservoir in the garage which is about 90 feet away. Since I already owned the Neptune ATK V2 for my current system...

www.reef2reef.com

Thanks. I’m using an Apex too with a dos and atk. I ran 3 tubes for water, 4 tubes for dosing, and the cable. I couldn’t use conduit due to location of the runs. I will leave the dosing lines as back ups and put the second dos under my cabinet.

 

[n2585722]

I have my ATO, AWC and dosing in the garage. I use the same tube for ATO and All For Reef dosing. I have a check valve on the output of each of the two pumps. The drain pump is in the garage and pulls water from the sump to the pump then back up through the attic to the kitchen sink drain. ai have been using the tubing for 7 years now. The tubing is run through conduit and the conduit is insulated since it does get below 32 degrees here in the winter.

 

[aaron186]

I have my ATO, AWC and dosing in the garage. I use the same tube for ATO and All For Reef dosing. I have a check valve on the output of each of the two pumps. The drain pump is in the garage and pulls water from the sump to the pump then back up through the attic to the kitchen sink drain. ai have been using the tubing for 7 years now. The tubing is run through conduit and the conduit is insulated since it does get below 32 degrees here in the winter.

Thank you. So you put the check valve on the tank side right? Does all for reef precipitate? Have you had luck with SPS using it?

 

[n2585722]

I put the check valves on the output side of the pumps. I do use dosing pumps. I only have LPS so I cannot say about SPS. I am sure there are people out there that use it on tanks with SPS though.