Wishing For A Peristaltic Pump For the Calcium Reactor

[TheClark]

Man, it would be nice.  

Especially now that APEX showed me how wildly the flow varies off of my MJ1200 feed pump.

Flow is in liters per hour.  That means I have been ranging from 56 mls/min to 98 mls / minute.  I do have to think it would be much more consistent with the peristaltic...  

Going to be looking for some cheap options as my reef budget will not allow for a good one at this point (400 dollars...)!

 

[albertareef]

32 minutes ago, TheClark said:

Man, it would be nice.  

Especially now that APEX showed me how wildly the flow varies off of my MJ1200 feed pump.

Flow is in liters per hour.  That means I have been ranging from 56 mls/min to 98 mls / minute.  I do have to think it would be much more consistent with the peristaltic...  

Going to be looking for some cheap options as my reef budget will not allow for a good one at this point (400 dollars...)!

 

Interesting.  This is one reason I decided to experiment with the wide open gravity feed at a higher flow rate and higher Ph set point. I think it will work well once I get the stupid needle valve out of the circuit. 

[Jorge]

I wouldn't trade a brushless master flex for a kh guardian or whatever else alk monitor is around the corner.

[youcallmenny]

I've had good luck with these pumps, though I am not sure how well it would suit your needs: 

https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/brs-top-off-doser-50-ml-per-minute-1.html

Edited September 25, 2017 by youcallmenny

[TheClark]

9 hours ago, albertareef said:

Interesting.  This is one reason I decided to experiment with the wide open gravity feed at a higher flow rate and higher Ph set point. I think it will work well once I get the stupid needle valve out of the circuit. 

Please tell me more about the gravity feed, is it off of the overflow?  Also quite interesting...  About how many milliters per minute are you running?

 

[TheClark]

Alert works well, this just happened

 

Date: 2017-09-25 07:49:50 -0700
Status: ON
Statement: If FLx11_1 < 3.0 Then ON 
 

 

Indeed, there was a slow down in flow. Unhooked the JG fitting, hooked it backup, clog resolved.  Thirty seconds to fix, would have never noticed otherwise

Pretty interesting how the flow peaked up a few times this morning too before the clog:

 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

I wouldn't trade a brushless master flex for a kh guardian or whatever else alk monitor is around the corner.

yeah.
what is the deal with the apex all in one monitor? i heard all about it then poof.. i havent heard anything.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[TheClark]

6 hours ago, pdxmonkeyboy said:

yeah.
what is the deal with the apex all in one monitor? i heard all about it then poof.. i havent heard anything.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
 

Releases next year sadly.  Can barely stand waiting!

 

[mattv]

I.picked up a used masterflex off eBay for $250. Highly recommend you look there.

[TheClark]

39 minutes ago, mattv said:

I.picked up a used masterflex off eBay for $250. Highly recommend you look there.

Thanks Mattv!  There are so darn many models.  Any good references besides the massive RC thread on exactly what model to choose?

[TheClark]

Update:  flow alarm this morning from apex

flow had dropped off low enough that the 1/4” flow monitor could not detect it

opened and closed the needle valve, flow came back up

no matter what the pump I am liking the apex flow meter

 

[albertareef]

On 9/25/2017 at 7:19 AM, TheClark said:

Please tell me more about the gravity feed, is it off of the overflow?  Also quite interesting...  About how many milliters per minute are you running?

 

Sorry - spotty wifi out here. To be more accurate, I am actually using a siphon (which is specifically discouraged) from one of my overflows. Honestly, despite the rep I think this will be rock solid once I get the needle valve out of the line. No flow control so all through PH. Higher flow means I run a higher PH to balance - at 7.0 right now which hold KH at 8.6 - 9.0. I can measure flow when I get back but probably on the order of. 50 a 75 ml/min.  

Masterflex would be great but running out of room for gear in my stand!

[TheClark]

2 hours ago, albertareef said:

Sorry - spotty wifi out here. To be more accurate, I am actually using a siphon (which is specifically discouraged) from one of my overflows. Honestly, despite the rep I think this will be rock solid once I get the needle valve out of the line. No flow control so all through PH. Higher flow means I run a higher PH to balance - at 7.0 right now which hold KH at 8.6 - 9.0. I can measure flow when I get back but probably on the order of. 50 a 75 ml/min.  

Masterflex would be great but running out of room for gear in my stand!

If you can get gravity/siphon to be reliable, seems like the best of the best.  Keep us posted I am quite interested.

I am going to try one of these:

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MCWL4UX/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

With one of these I already had laying around:

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DER02OE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

as a 40 dollar experiment.

Hoping with PWM I can slow it down/make it quiet.  And, with the apex hoping it stays consistent!

 

[TheClark]

Got it hooked up, charts in the am

[Jorge]

Interesting. Would like to see how that goes!

[TheClark]

11 hours in, no clogs or stops.  Already beating the MJ.  

 

That's the good.  Here are my concerns which I will update this thread on.

1)  At this slow speed, it makes an annoying clicking sound.  

2)  How long will this cheap motor hold up?

3)  I don't believe this is nearly as accurate as a stepper motor based peristaltic pump.

 

On point 1, I plan to try and make a hush box for the peristaltic pump part, lest I go crazy as it clicks away.

On point 2, I plan to keep spares on hand (if this becomes permanent).  Also, I have two other standard pumps as spares from the old setup.

On point 3, I believe that it is so much better than what I had, its a step in the right direction.

 

I have an old cole parmer 'beater' pump from auto water changes too lying around yet.  May bust that out and try it although it needs new tubing.  That is the thing with peristaltic, you gotta be ready for the tubing to wear out and the pumps to leak allot of water potentially before you notice!

 

Ok, that's my update!

 

[mattv]

23 hours ago, TheClark said:

Thanks Mattv!  There are so darn many models.  Any good references besides the massive RC thread on exactly what model to choose?

I went for the basic strip down model, just has a dial to control the feed rate instead of the fancy digital ones.

[Trailermann]

The Clark swapped a MJ 1200 with 75 ml flow with an Amazon peristaltic pump  rated at 500 ml.  Help me understand how you throttle this pump down.

[TheClark]

3 minutes ago, Trailermann said:

The Clark swapped a MJ 1200 with 75 ml flow with an Amazon peristaltic pump  rated at 500 ml.  Help me understand how you throttle this pump down.

This guy throttles it down via PWM

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MCWL4UX/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

All needle valves are wide open, the pump does the metering, not valves with this setup.

 

Please note, this is not a stepper motor like the high end masterflex pumps.  

This is just an experiment.

I will update everyone, there are some concerns but also some encouraging bits as well!

 

 

[TheClark]

Couple of pics.  This is a very rough prototype/expirement complete with tie wraps!  If this sticks, will be making a nice box for all this junk

 

The pump and the flow speed

 

The flow from the CR back to the sump...

[albertareef]

Thanks for the update Jeremy. Looks promising so far!  Your point about tubing failure is one that has always concerned me having used peristaltics  a lot in my line of work. The stress put on the tubing by the rollers almost gaurentees a split at some point so be prepared! I lost a few experiments that way over the years🙁

[TheClark]

2 hours ago, albertareef said:

Thanks for the update Jeremy. Looks promising so far!  Your point about tubing failure is one that has always concerned me having used peristaltics  a lot in my line of work. The stress put on the tubing by the rollers almost gaurentees a split at some point so be prepared! I lost a few experiments that way over the years🙁

That's about as real world experiment experience as it gets!  Thanks for sharing...

I had the auto water changer in the garage dump a whole lot of water before noticing a few years back...

Just wondering... If you had an apex that would have alerted you that the flow stopped during the experiment, would that have saved any grief and allowed the experiment to continue?

[TheClark]

Calling the experiment a success.  This is merely a prototype though... nothing I would leave in service for the long haul.

Seems like one important variable is pressure.  The peristaltic pump has good pressure through the tubing and doesn't seem to clog as much as the MJ was.  Granted the MJ was not designed to pump with pressure through 1/4" tubing.

For the longer term experiment... Found some 30 dollar 'quiet' pump heads that should come in next week.  This current one makes a racket (even at reduced speed) and really doesn't seem to be built for continuous duty.  Will run it until next week and see if it holds up for at least a week though in case anyone is interested.

I do use these exact same pump heads for ATO and Kalk.  They pump from the garage up to my office.  Noise in the garage is no big deal.  @ssappington I noticed also uses the same peristaltic pump heads on his ATO as well.  

So there are options out there!

Anything I run, I like to have 2 of for redundancy sakes.  Everything seems to break at some point and the stakes are so high.  So having a < 100 dollar option allow for one in service, one on the shelf is super appealing.  Even though I should suck it up and get a masterflex 

 

 

[albertareef]

4 hours ago, TheClark said:

That's about as real world experiment experience as it gets!  Thanks for sharing...

I had the auto water changer in the garage dump a whole lot of water before noticing a few years back...

Just wondering... If you had an apex that would have alerted you that the flow stopped during the experiment, would that have saved any grief and allowed the experiment to continue?

Yeah - we didn't have any flow monitoring setup although we were fractionating off of a column but it was usually based on time.  Lots of our runs were overnight so probably wouldn't have saved them anyway... would have needed to sort it out within a few minutes to salvage things.

[TheClark]

7 hours ago, albertareef said:

Thanks for the update Jeremy. Looks promising so far!  Your point about tubing failure is one that has always concerned me having used peristaltics  a lot in my line of work. The stress put on the tubing by the rollers almost gaurentees a split at some point so be prepared! I lost a few experiments that way over the years🙁

How do you feed from the siphon?  

A 1/4" T off of the full siphon on the overflow?

It's intriguing, I can see that being quite consistent as well as long as the overflow level remains consistent.