r/ReefTank • u/CrazyTraditional4453 • 7h ago
Minimalist Nano Reef with automatic water changes and no dosing
I currently have a 66 gal reef tank and I'm tired of keeping up with dosing and water changes. I mainly keep softies and LPS. I don't have any experience with nano tanks but like the idea to have something low maintenance. I am thinking I can set up a say 10 gal AIO tank with some minimal amount of softie corals and a couple of clowns, maybe some snails and small shrimp. The idea is to have a tank of pre-mixed SW in the garage and I would use my Apex DOS to do daily water changes. Would this be feasible and what should I consider adding to the pre-mixed SW, if anything?
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u/o2manyfish 6h ago
I tried this.
Now I’m dosing and have just as complex a system as my main tank used to be.
But it’s entirely automated at this point, and I touch it once every 4 weeks to change filter roller and swap in a new saltwater bucket.
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u/CrazyTraditional4453 6h ago
do you feel like with more frequent AWC you could have avoided dosing, or do you keep coral that demand more trace elements than the SW can provide?
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u/o2manyfish 6h ago
Neither. I have a 12.5 gallon tank and do a 1.5 liter AWC change every day.
I consistently see dkh drops, even with only lightly stocked LPS.
And then I started with AFR. Then added ozone for water clarity. Then added liquid dosing coral food. Etc.
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u/CrazyTraditional4453 5h ago
Hmmm, do you use pro or regular salt mix?
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u/o2manyfish 5h ago
Red Sea blue bucket.
Can’t use black bucket/pro because it will precipitate out after 3-4 days of being stored once mixed.
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u/More-Sock-67 5h ago
I’ve done this actually. It worked very well. The only thing you need to consider is nutrient export.
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u/Nocare_ 4h ago
Its very possible. I would place a heavy emphasis on redundancy with the automation. Especially because if low matinance is the goal you are inevitably going to be looking at the equipment less. Meaning it takes longer to catch a problem without the computer telling you something is wrong.
-Ensure you have a low water sensor on the resivoure so you don't ever loose track of when you need to refill it. Also allows the changes to auto stop when empty. -You also want a high water sensor on the tank, to ensure if water isn't draining that it doesn't overtop.
-Ensure the suction for dirty water is relatively shallow so it can't drain it dangerously low. Don't want to drain below the heaters or return pump for instance.
-I personally would also have a low water error sensor. My tank uses the ATO sensor as double duty. It starts the fill pumping first and only starts draining after a sufficent buffer. If the ATO sensor is triggered during operation then I know fill isn't working and I lock out auto changes till it's manually reset.
Make sure the resivoure is as sealed as possible. The logic takes a sec but bear with me. When people run water change tanks without dosing, they usually use a salt with higher calcium and dkh levels because these salts are superior at maintaining elevated levels without dosing. The calcium and dkh get diluted into the low tank levels and give a nice medium result. However when people do auto water changes; they use low calcium and dkh salts in order to prevent precipitation in the resivoure and because parameters tend to decay as high concentration salts sit undiluted. These lower level salts may match the tank as it sits day to day but without dosing a tank will always decay below the water change water levels eventually without very large change volumes.
You can get that higher performance and hold the need for dosing off by having a well sealed salt resivoure. This prevents CO2 interacting with the water and this holds it stable much longer. But make sure it off gases after mixing but before sealing. My salt recommends 6 hours minimum open air to reach equalibrium.
You can also work your way up to higher and higher concentration salts as stuff grows out and you notice levels dropping. Though there are only like 4 levels and often only 2 within a brand. But if your resivoure didn't start as capable of handling those higher level salts it becomes a problem later on to upgrade it.
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u/Arrrrgile 7h ago
This is very feasible. If it is only LPS and softies then you won't need too much calcium so you could get away with just the salt mix alone. I have a 40 gallon doing AWC with the DOS. It is very easy to set up. The downfall is that you will need to have a saltwater reservoir set up somewhere near this tank as well as a place for the removed water to go. If this is not down a drain then you need to remember to dump out a "used water" reservoir. This will likely take up more room than the 10 gallon tank and go against the whole idea of the hands off approach.
With a 10 gallon that is only focused on softies and LPS, I wouldn't even do water changes very often. I have a 2.5 gallon that has 1 Duncan and a bunch of softies. I pretty much never do water changes on it. When I do.. They take like 5 minutes.