DIY Avast style Kalkstirrer stepper motor?

Kzang

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My buddy is cheap. He is currently dosing kalk using the (he wants to do it kind of way) way of Chris Meckley.

He uses fully saturated kalk and Jebao doser to dose it.

Now he is cheap, and I love my Avast kalkstirrer, but he is too cheap just to buy it.

Chris Mackey says to not use a kalkstirrer with this method, but technically he isn’t following it

He is basically just dosing kalk to target ph, and not worrying about alkalinity. Which is currently working.

So I want to try to get him a janky DIY avast style kalkstirrer.

I thought about just using a 1g jug, and doing like the Avast with a cheap jug, cheap acrylic rod, pvc tubing, and etc. really cheap

He has a 40g long with no sump.

The only thing is i can’t seem find a cheap continuous high torque low rpm motor with power supply.

If I can find that, we can test it out and see if he likes it. It may persuade him to get the Avast. He’s cheap, but can easily afford the avast.

It would also lessen the wear and tear on the Jebao tubing from only having to pull rodi water and not saturated kalk.

I don’t know if it would have trouble pushing the rodi in or not, but be nice to see.

Technically he has been using their kalk from me and his ph of the solution hasn’t went down in the past week or 2 of it being mixed fully saturated.
 

Reefing Madness

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Kerbash

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Ive not used avast before but a nemo 17 stepper motor would work i think. If not you can always print out some gear reduction for a small motor? That would be the cheapest way to go imo, but stepper would be the simplest.

I think the big issue might be the kalk not being in an air tight container? CO2 is gonna dissolve and precipitate. No clue though is that right but sound right :face-with-tears-of-joy:
 
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Kzang

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Ive not used avast before but a nemo 17 stepper motor would work i think. If not you can always print out some gear reduction for a small motor? That would be the cheapest way to go imo, but stepper would be the simplest.

I think the big issue might be the kalk not being in an air tight container? CO2 is gonna dissolve and precipitate. No clue though is that right but sound right :face-with-tears-of-joy:
Well, how would you wire it? I can see how you can buy the motor, but not how to turn it on with power. Looks like you have to get a controller?

Just need the motor and the power. Avast uses a motor and you wire just a power cord to it.

As for co2, this is more of a jug with a motor stirrer and acrylic tube. Probably 3d print if he can a paddle. And just cover it with basically the top with a hole cut with a tube silicone in.

The point of it is to jankily and cheap way of putint something together to show that the Abast will work well for him and look good.

He is just cheap. Hes got the money, but just cheap.

He’s using a 5g jug with fully saturated kalk right now and dosing with a Jebao doser. So this isn’t great as the Jebao isn’t the most reliable pump you want dosing saturated kalk with and the kalk will degrade the tubing fast and not great to dose that much that many times on it.

He is keeping his min ph 8.17-8.24 to high 8.3-3.5. His variable alkalinity is around 10 stable so far.

He has an apex (I finally convinced him to get one) so he has a ph probe and the doser is plugged into the apex so he can turn it off if someone the ph starts to climb too high.
 

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Yeah the stepper requires a micro controller to run it, that is what I would personally go with since you can tune the speed, but it will require some work. If you are looking more for a plug and play this might work? No clue about the torque or anything so lmk how it goes if you are decided to do it :p

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Kzang

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I just bought one and charged him in Venmo. :)

But for the sake of this post, you can buy every part, including the motor and power cord separately from Avast.
 

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