DIY Liquid doser

[NigelK8485]

So I've been wanting to do something like this for awhile just because I'm lazy and hate doing fertilizers every day. Now though I'm going to be leaving the country for a little while in under a month and I don't want to make someone come to my house every day to fertilize my plants but I want them to get fertilized.

Anyone have any experience building an automatic doser?

I was thinking of using APT Instruments

Buying two of them, one for micro and one for macro. 30 RPM, 1.6 mm food grade norprene tubing, which would give me about 1.5 mL/minute. I'd set them up on timers to turn on before the lights came on.

I was planning on getting two little black jugs or containers that I could premix my fertilizers in, I have little nano powerheads I could flip on for an hour prior to the pumps turning on to stir the fertilizers up.




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[NigelK8485]

Well I ordered the pumps and hosing anyways haha. I don't see any reason why these won't work, obviously I'll measure and time it myself to make sure it's dosing the proper amount.

Now I just need to find two black containers to hold the liquid fertilizers and try to find space under my tank.


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[IllusionX]

That's a lot of timers to control all these devices to turn on and off.

 

[NigelK8485]

That's a lot of timers to control all these devices to turn on and off.

Three timers. One for each pump and then I have a timer with two outlets for the powerheads. I run everything on timers though, lights, co2, heat lamps for reptiles...all of them have battery backups in case power goes out. I trust my timers.


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[Mebbid]

Those peristaltic pumps are what pretty much everyone else uses that automates their system.

Ive even seen them perform water changes.

 

[NigelK8485]

Those peristaltic pumps are what pretty much everyone else uses that automates their system.

Ive even seen them perform water changes.

Right on. I'm excited to get these in and get started on it. I'm looking at using two of those plastic pasta containers to hold the fertilizers.

Dosing ferts isn't a huge hassle but it's always something I think about after the fact and have to go back and do.




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[NigelK8485]

Got it all set up and tested! It's working!


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[PassengerTN]

Cool stuff Nigel! Diy projects are fun and rewarding IMO.


Jesse

 

[NigelK8485]

Cool stuff Nigel! Diy projects are fun and rewarding IMO.


Jesse

Yeah yeah, now I just need to buy the distilled water to make my half gallon batches of fertilizer and I should be set to not have to physically fertilize again.


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[Fresh2o]

Good job on the auto doser. Post updates on any adjustments or tweaking you end up doing on this.



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[NigelK8485]

Good job on the auto doser. Post updates on any adjustments or tweaking you end up doing on this.



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Thanks. Got my solutions mixed, 1500 mL of water and tripled the amount of each of the dry fertilizers aside from nitrates which I didn't add in and I kept the phosphates down to 2/3. Added excel to both solutions to prevent any algae or mold growth which I don't think will be an issue anyways.

I timed the pumps earlier, they are dripping about 1.9 mL/minute so around 8 minutes should give me what I need.

Each of the little bins has a powerhead that mixes any precipitate that may have settled, they're on timers to come on for an hour before the pumps turn on. Tonight will be the first night I actually run it, I'll be setting a cup under where the hoses come out and check in the morning to see if it all worked.



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[aqua_chem]

We use peristaltic pumps to control how much medication patients get. I'm sure it will work fine for plants