Salt water mixing station help

[shewey]

Hello, I’m new to the forum. This is my first post ,Apologies in advance if I’m posting in the wrong thread.

It’s been 30 years since I last had a saltwater tank, so can use all the help I can get.

Recently purchased a Red Sea 425 G3 Max. It’s been about a month, just sand,
Life rock and three fish, a couple of clowns and one rabbit fish fox face. Doing fine.

My tank is on the first floor, i’m putting the salt water mixing and water change station right underneath in the basement. Eventually, I’ll have a drain and return PVC and also a quarter inch poly RODI feed shooting through the floor to the sump. I have the U line 55 gallon drums. Anyone have any ideas/thoughts on how I should plumb them together. I’m using Claude, but it’s not very clear.

 

[radiata]

I'm not sure you actually need a classical "mixing station". My DT is plumbed to my basement. I use 55G drums. One is for RODI water, and uses optical sensors to keep it automatically filled under Apex control. Another is for mixing new salt water. I love making 50 gallons at a time, using Fritz salt that comes in 50G bags in boxes of four. No awkward measuring really necessary. (Two Little Fishies also packages their salt that way. FWIW, I'd be using Tropic Marin salt if it was packaged that way.) Another drum is for used water I've removed during a water change - I could run the water directly to my sink, but this drum adds visual control to how much water I've removed. I use more pumps, but could get away with a single Sicce ULTRA ZERO UTILITY PUMP (Sicce ULTRA ZERO UTILITY PUMP). This pump will take water out of a drum to within a half inch of the bottom. And you can multi-purpose it to move water from one location to another - just tie a piece of nylon rope to the handle so you can move the pump without getting your sleeves wet. The pump also serves as a nice salt mixing pump, but you might want to keep an eve on the temperature of your new salt water, perhaps with a controller, or your new water might get warmer than you want it to be.

You'll also need a basement simple container or (lower) sump that collects the water coming from your DT. It needs to be greater than the volume of water you expect to change at one shot., and have enough extra depth for the pump going back to your DT. (Put this lower sump on a raised platform, not the floor. Your back will thank you for it.)

When I do a water change, I turn off the pump from the lower sump to the DT, pump 50G of used SW from the lower sump into the used water drum, pump 50G of new saltwater into the lower sump, and turn the pump going to the DT back on.

I use some quick release hose fittings to connect the Sicce pump for different hose lengths/uses. I also prefer using silicon hose vs PVC hose.

I also suggest get a Milwaukee salinity checker if you don't have one already.

If you're anywhere near 07039, I'll give you a walk through and detail the worst mistakes I've made with my setup.