AaronHartwell Posted September 9, 2011 Share Posted September 9, 2011 As I've moved from housing primarily LPS to SPS I find myself needing to dose alkalinity, calcium, and magnesium almost daily to maintain ideal levels. I have a 34 gallon tank and debated going with a calcium reactor or dosing 2-part or kalk. Ultimately I decided to go with BRS 2-part. Rather than manually dosing daily which I think would wear me down and make me want to ultimately quit the hobby I decided to automate dosing. Initially I looked at some of the DIY set-ups I've seen that leverageTom's aqualifter pumps. Given that I don't have a sump and I would be essentially pumping from the floor up several feet to the back of the tank I decided to go a different route. Next I looked at buying three individual well-made peristaltic pumps (BRS or Drew's) but when I added the up the cost of three pumps, plus a controller or three digital times, and tubing I would have been spending over $500! That's more than I paid for my entire Solana setup new - tank, stand, metal halide light, skimmer, return pumps. Ouch. This led me to start looking at some the chinese imported dosing set-ups on Ebay. I looked around on the various reef forums and was pleased to see that people are having great luck with them! Here are the three that I'm currently looking at: http://www.aquastyleonline.com/products/Ka...ump-System.html http://www.ebay.com/itm/Marine-Magic-aquar...=item415ce47d78 http://www.ebay.com/itm/MC-03-M-Dosing-pum...=item5d3031a862 I'm sure others are in a similiar boat so I thought I'd share my research thus far. I'll let you all know which one I end up going with. Note to admins: This is the second time I've typed this post up and posted it today. The first post mysteriously dissapeared. If my initial post got deleted or moved please let me know. I don't *think* I'm saying anything wrong here? Thanks. Link to comment
krackerjacksna Posted September 10, 2011 Share Posted September 10, 2011 I have a 33 and want to start dozing also, tagging along.... Bump Link to comment
AaronHartwell Posted September 10, 2011 Author Share Posted September 10, 2011 I'm trying to find a US distributor for one of the three. I have been unable to do so thus far and don't want to wait three weeks for shipping. Link to comment
krackerjacksna Posted September 10, 2011 Share Posted September 10, 2011 Anyone else have luck, or share what you did? Link to comment
AaronHartwell Posted September 11, 2011 Author Share Posted September 11, 2011 If you do a Bing search for Marine Magic Dosing or Kamoer Dosing you'll find some good forum posts where people have had good experiences with these pumps. I think I'm going to order the Kamoer tomorrow. Link to comment
basser1 Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 Over on RC there is athread about the Marine Magic doser and it gets good reviews. And delivery is fast considering where it ships from. Here's a link to it: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthre...ine+magic+doser BTW, You can get the dual model for less. You don't necessarily need to dose other than Alk and Cal as I rarely need to dose Mag. Link to comment
AaronHartwell Posted September 11, 2011 Author Share Posted September 11, 2011 Yeah, that's one of the threads I've been reading on the Marine Magic. Link to comment
7digits Posted September 11, 2011 Share Posted September 11, 2011 I just use kalk in my ato. Currently I use 3/4 teaspoon per gallon of topoff water. My all stays at 10, and my calc stays at 460. I use tom's aqualifter with a knot in the tubing to get it to drip. It runs for about 10 minutes every 6 hours. Works great and it's a lot cheaper. Plus the kalk binds phosphates, just a bonus. I guess it's not an option if you top off manually. It also helps to have a sump to hide stuff. Link to comment
AaronHartwell Posted September 11, 2011 Author Share Posted September 11, 2011 I went ahead and placed my order for the Kamoer Dosing System. http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format=go..._13157779184491 I'll take pictures and document the unpacking, initial impressions, and set-up. Link to comment
AaronHartwell Posted September 25, 2011 Author Share Posted September 25, 2011 After placing my online order my brand new Kamoer triple channel dosing pump arrived in the mail. It took just under a week to arrive! Here are some pictues of the unboxing and a picture of the pump installed. I'll send first impressions soon! More pics... Link to comment
AaronHartwell Posted September 30, 2011 Author Share Posted September 30, 2011 Ok, so I've had a week or so with my new dosing pump and I am loving it! Here are a few observations: Packaging: The pump came in a sturdy cardboard box that was wrapped in a cool green colored shipping paper. It arrived in perfect condition. The box is designed such that even if the box took some damage the pump unit would likely be unharmed. Contents: One three pump unit, an AC adapter, some aquarium tubing (similiar to airline tubing), four nipples that connect the aquarium tubing to the flexible tubing that runs through the pumps, and four check valves. Build quality: Upon inspection, the pump appears to be well made. It's not exactly heavy but it feels solid. The display panel on the front is nicely molded into the case. They advertise the unit as being water resistant. At a glance, I believe it might be but don't plan to test it. Programming: It offers two modes. Auto dosing and manual dosing. With auto dosing you can specify how many ml/day you want to dose for each pump and whether you want that daily dose administered in one shot or spread out over several doses in a given day. For example, if you're dosing 25 ml/day you could have that 25 ml dosed all at once or you could have 5 ml's dosed 5 times a day for a total of 25 ml/day. The unit automatically adds a delay between pumps to prevent chemical interference that might happen if all three pumps dosed at the same time. You can tweak the amount of delay. I haven't played with the manual dosing mode other than to prime the lines. I'm not sure why you'd use this mode over auto mode. Noise: This thing is as close to silent as you can get. I can only hear it if I have the aquarium stand door open and am sitting right in front of it. That's all for now. It is SO nice not to be having to manually dose every day!!! Let me know if you have any questions. Aaron Link to comment
AaronHartwell Posted October 1, 2011 Author Share Posted October 1, 2011 Everything is going smoothly! Hopefully some of you who were interested in this thread got the updates. Link to comment
YouKnowBlev Posted October 1, 2011 Share Posted October 1, 2011 Anyone found a place to buy the dual setup? Link to comment
bluefrog Posted October 1, 2011 Share Posted October 1, 2011 Everything is going smoothly! Hopefully some of you who were interested in this thread got the updates. ive been following along. keep them coming. Link to comment
AaronHartwell Posted October 1, 2011 Author Share Posted October 1, 2011 YouKnow - I haven't seen a double version of the Kamoer, only a triple. That's not to say that a double doesn't exist, I just haven't seen it. Blue - Cool! Link to comment
AaronHartwell Posted October 22, 2011 Author Share Posted October 22, 2011 The pump is working like a champ! It took me a couple of weeks to figure out exactly how much to dose to maintain perfect levels but I couldn't be happier. Not having to manually dose daily has made the hobby 10x more enjoyable. At least for me. Link to comment
Joe Dirt Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 The pump is working like a champ! It took me a couple of weeks to figure out exactly how much to dose to maintain perfect levels but I couldn't be happier. Not having to manually dose daily has made the hobby 10x more enjoyable. At least for me. Glad to hear that. Could you dilute the dose and increase the time to make it act like an ATO? Link to comment
AaronHartwell Posted October 22, 2011 Author Share Posted October 22, 2011 Yeah, you could. A lot of people don't dose magnesium daily so you could use the third pump for water instead and do manual dosing on magnesium once a week or once every other week. Link to comment
Joe Dirt Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 I guess I just like the idea of having really stable "the big 3" and salinity without all the labor. I think this is now on the christmas list. Now I just need to find suitable dosing containers. Link to comment
AaronHartwell Posted October 22, 2011 Author Share Posted October 22, 2011 I guess I just like the idea of having really stable "the big 3" and salinity without all the labor. I think this is now on the christmas list. Now I just need to find suitable dosing containers. Yeah, I like having to not worry about the three. Bulk Reef Supply sells the one gallon jugs I'm using. They also have some cool space saving ones that are tall and narrow and have a smaller footprint. http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/store/clear-...on-pvc-jug.html Link to comment
JDK Posted March 30, 2012 Share Posted March 30, 2012 Glad I found this thread I have been researching these exact dosers. I am leaning towards the marine magic or marine color units. Not too much out there about the marine color which seems to have better features than the marine magic. All I found was a of the marine color but its in french Anyone using the Marine Color?- Link to comment
Aquanist Posted March 30, 2012 Share Posted March 30, 2012 Never heard of this Marine Color doser but it sure looks similar to Bubble Magus I'm using. Might be the same hardware with different stickers. I've now had it for over 2 years and no complains yet. For carefree dosing I'd use Tropic Marin liquid refills (3x5l per set). Link to comment
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