Jebao DP-4 Automatic Doser

[disaster999]

I always manually dosed my tank and never even though of buying an automatic doser before. One day a reefer friend messaged me telling his Jebao DP-4 was the bomb and I should get one too. I asked him how much was it and he said it was under 60 bucks shipped. At that price I said to myself, why not.

 

Few days later I have the doser.

 

DIYed a rack for it and mounted it in my tank

 

 

After a few days of playing around with the doser and setting up a dosing schedule, here are my thoughts.

 

Calibrating was painless, Pick the dosing head number you want to calibrate, hit start and stop it when it reaches 100ml. 3 of 4 of the dosing head calibrated just fine. One refused to calibrate as it always timed out before reaching 100ml. I tried switching the dosing head assembly to another motor and that didnt help. The motor on it must be a dud. It wasnt too big of a deal for me since I dont need to dose 4 things in it right now. I can compensate the dosage by telling it to dose a few ml more. If it was a high dollar item I would be pissed.

 

Setting up the doser was....not that fun. Although the menu was easy enough to navigate...the programming is very tedious. It will ask you how many times a day you want to dose between 1-24 times, the interval between dosage from 0-30 days, the amount of each dosage in ml and the time to dose for each dosage.

 

Say for my situation, I want to dose 5 times a day everyday. I will set the doser to dose 5 times a day, 0 interval days since I want to dose everyday. The doser will then ask you how much you want to dose for the first dosage and the time to dose that. Then it will ask you how much you want to dose for the second dosage and the time, and the same for the 3rd dose and so on. I have calc and alk to dose, 5 times a day, so thats 10 settings to set. Imagine if you have all 4 pumps running and running 24 dosages a day for each pump. you would have 96 settings to go through. I would of loved for it to ask you the total dosage you want to dose, how many times you want to dose and the time period you like it to dose and the program itself figure the rest out on its own. Much less work on your part.

 

Im quite happy, tho, with the doser overall. It did its job. It dosed the right amount and the right time as requested. It kept it program when I turned the power off...which I was worried. The best part, the doser is silent. The other dosers Ive heard are loud as hell with all the gear whine and whirl. This is practically silent.

 

I just gotta find out the amount I need to dose in my tank to keep a rock solid calc and alk level.

[basser1]

Thanks for the write-up!

 

It so happens I have one on order and can't wait to try it out.... I'm replacing an aqua-medic doser.

 

But you got your for $60 bucks??? WOW! I paid double that, but it's still not a bad price! It's amazing, BTW, how much this doser looks like the much more expensive GHL doser!

 

I'll be re-reading this review once I get it in, I think it's on a slow boat from China now!!

[farkwar]

Where did you get it < $60?

[hey]

Where did you get it < $60?

 

look at his location, ez when you don't have to pay international shipping.

[clownfitch]

My kalwasser dosing thru ATO is no longer keeping up with my tanks alkalinity demands so I am going to need to start dosing two part. Definitely going to look into this system. Thanks for the write up.

[disaster999]

look at his location, ez when you don't have to pay international shipping.

Also, now know you know the margins these guys have on the stuff they sell.

[TEETEE562]

I have it, it was definitely tedious to set each pump, but hey for that price (120) I'm not complaining. It was very easy to navigate through, the manual wasn't helpful though

[disaster999]

Definitely...you should check out the one on reefbreeders.com. They wrote their own manual

[GHill762]

Definitely...you should check out the one on reefbreeders.com. They wrote their own manual

still happy with this doser? is it still accurate and dependable?

[disaster999]

its still kicking...keeping my tank's parms stable.

[teenyreef]

I got one recently and I've been playing around with it. One of the pumps started to fail intermittently (wouldn't pump), which made it hard to get the dosing level dialed in. I sent Fishstreet an email about it and they responded immediately saying they'd send a new pump.

The other challenge I had is that I only need to dose 1ml at a time. Turns out if you have it do five or ten individual 1ml doses, it doses about twice as much as it should. If you have it dose a single 5 or 10ml dose, it's matches up nicely to what it should be. So mine, at least, is not accurate for small dose sizes, even though the specs say 1ml is the minimum dose supported.

 

Other than that it's been reliable and reasonably easy to use.

[Eisernes]

I got one recently and I've been playing around with it. One of the pumps started to fail intermittently (wouldn't pump), which made it hard to get the dosing level dialed in. I sent Fishstreet an email about it and they responded immediately saying they'd send a new pump.

The other challenge I had is that I only need to dose 1ml at a time. Turns out if you have it do five or ten individual 1ml doses, it doses about twice as much as it should. If you have it dose a single 5 or 10ml dose, it's matches up nicely to what it should be. So mine, at least, is not accurate for small dose sizes, even though the specs say 1ml is the minimum dose supported.

 

Other than that it's been reliable and reasonably easy to use.

Would you say 5mL is the minimum dose then or could it handle something like 2mL at a time?

[teenyreef]

That's hard to say as I didn't test at those doses. If I had to be safe I'd say 5ml is the minimum dose.

 

I ended up diluting my dosing liquid with 50% RODI water, and doing two 1ml doses a day. That just happened to work out to be roughly what I needed anyway. But if I really wanted to be precise, I'd have to dilute more like 4:1 so that I could dose at least 2ml per dose.

 

I recently ordered some BRS dosers, which dose much more slowly. That way I can dose more than once or twice a day. So I'll probably be selling my Jebao soon. I think it's a great doser for the price, just not really suitable for a pico or small nano.

[Maniu]

That's hard to say as I didn't test at those doses. If I had to be safe I'd say 5ml is the minimum dose.

 

I ended up diluting my dosing liquid with 50% RODI water, and doing two 1ml doses a day. That just happened to work out to be roughly what I needed anyway. But if I really wanted to be precise, I'd have to dilute more like 4:1 so that I could dose at least 2ml per dose.

 

I recently ordered some BRS dosers, which dose much more slowly. That way I can dose more than once or twice a day. So I'll probably be selling my Jebao soon. I think it's a great doser for the price, just not really suitable for a pico or small nano.

In your opinion, would this doser be too much for 16-25 gallon tank?

[Eisernes]

I picked up the 2 pump version of this to hold me off until I have the money for a DOS, and until they fix the programming issues with the DOS. I guess I will just dilute my solutions.

[Gamby]

That's hard to say as I didn't test at those doses. If I had to be safe I'd say 5ml is the minimum dose.

 

I ended up diluting my dosing liquid with 50% RODI water, and doing two 1ml doses a day. That just happened to work out to be roughly what I needed anyway. But if I really wanted to be precise, I'd have to dilute more like 4:1 so that I could dose at least 2ml per dose.

 

I recently ordered some BRS dosers, which dose much more slowly. That way I can dose more than once or twice a day. So I'll probably be selling my Jebao soon. I think it's a great doser for the price, just not really suitable for a pico or small nano.

 

Will you be running the BRS dosers on your 4 or 10 gallon tank? What are you planning to use for control?

[teenyreef]

I plan to run them on both and sell the Jebao. Or save it for a bigger tank

 

I've got an Apex that I will use to control them.

[rsucre]

I know this post is old (2015), but just in case, I want to share what I'm doing in order to use the DP-4 relatively accurately in nano tanks (small doses).  I calibrate the pumps at 50ml (not 100ml).  I found that after that, the pumps dose 1ml very accurate.  Then, I stick with 1ml doses.  If I want to dose 3ml of Alk, then I dose 3 intervals of 1ml each.  If I want to dose 10ml of vinegar, then I dose 10 intervals of 1ml.  Also, you can calibrate some pumps for low dosage (at 50ml) knowing that you can only use them at 1ml doses and calibrate other pumps at 100ml and use them for larger doses.

 

I'm still playing with it, but I think this works.

[teenyreef]

That's a great idea! If I ever need to use my old DP-4 I'll try this out. 

[rsucre]

Teeny, How is the BRS slow dosing pump working?  Are you using it with the Apex?  I'm considering it.

[teenyreef]

Yes, I control them with my Apex. But you need to use the physical relay ports because the solid state ones don't work all the time with very low current devices like the BRS pumps. So either outlets 4 and 8 on the EB-8, or any of the EB-4 outlets. 

 

It provides very fine control and the pumps are rock solid. 

[jbb]

15 minutes ago, rsucre said:

Teeny, How is the BRS slow dosing pump working?  Are you using it with the Apex?  I'm considering it.

The BRS 1.1ml pumps work very well in my experience.  I run 2 of them with my Apex, and have never had an issue. 

[rsucre]

3 hours ago, teenyreef said:

Yes, I control them with my Apex. But you need to use the physical relay ports because the solid state ones don't work all the time with very low current devices like the BRS pumps.

I think that the EB832 power bar that comes with the new Apex, all outlets are relay.

[rsucre]

Back to the DP-4 calibration tweak.

 

I calibrated 3 of my DP-4 pumps at 50ml and they will be used exclusively to dose 1ml at a time.  Larger doses will not be accurate.  One of the pumps I calibrated at 70ml and that one will be used to dose 2ml at a time.  I came up with this calibration values by trial and error.  Not ideal, but works for me...