Aquarium auto water top up setup

Firstly, apologies for the spinning noise in the background. My washing machine just happened to be spin drying the clothes!

This set up consists of two sets of racks, each with 4 tiers of 2 tanks per tier, and each tank of size 2'x1'x15" tall. Total of 16 tanks. The top tier is mainly for aging water. In the video, the first float valve you see is for topping up the left most tank on the top tier with tap water. As long as the water level falls below a certain level, the float valve will release water from tap. As we pan to the right, you can see pvc tubes connecting the 4 tanks together. The last tank on the right is where aged water is drained by gravity to the tanks below through a system of pvc pipes and float valves. Panning down, you can see the last footage zooming in on the float valve dripping water automatically into the tank which I had just siphoned. All the 12 tanks have this float valve connected to them.

With this system, I don't have to be bothered with topping up the tanks with water during water change, as this is already automated. Sure saves a lot of time! ; )

I have also setup a drip system (slow constant siphoning of tank water to drainage) for all the tanks, but it is a little crude at the moment, and I think just doing regular siphoning of the tanks is actually good enough, so I might just remove the drip off setup.

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• aquarium
• auto
• water
• top
• up
• setup
• guppy
• poecilia
• reticulata
• endler
• albino
• full
• red
• half
• black
• yellow
• tuxedo
• swallow
• ribbon
• glass
• belly
• see
• through
• singapore
• howto

[DiscusKev]

Thanks for sharing, this is really great and it's good to know that you wrote how it work out in the video description. However I still don't understand how these piping and top-off system work, I would like one but it's rather complex for me to implement =s

[ongjj8]

@DiscusKev

I have a schematic of the layout of my system at our local forum Arofanatics. You can search for my thread on my auto water top up system. Maybe it'll better help you understand how it works! : )

[JamesFishTanks]

I'm thinking of doing a system like this but with 3 bigger tanks, your system works pretty well.

[ongjj8]

@JamesFishTanks

Main advantage of this system is that it tops up what flows off, instead of the other way around. As long as the flow off is limited in terms of flowrate and also the maximum amount of water flowing off, then you are quite safe from ending up with an empty tank!

I have the same system for my altums tank, only addition is that there is a continuous drip off through airline hose to drainage, and new water flows in constantly to replace the drip offs.

[JamesFishTanks]

@ongjj8 Could you do a vid of your altum system?

[ongjj8]

@JamesFishTanks

i'll see what i can come up with. not much different from the system here, just that there is an additional drip off using an airline tubing.

[ongjj8]

@tuanviet101088

At least it saves me the time to top up the tanks, as usually topping up slowly is desirable but always very time consuming. Quite a few times I would forget about the topping up, and water would over flow the tanks and flood the room! With this setup, such incidents won't happen anymore!

[tuanviet101088]

woo.... A perfect system !