The Seaside Aquatics dosing pump is a durable single-channel peristaltic pump with no controller, but a single control knob. If you want to dose a two or three part solution to keep up your reef aquarium’s mineral balance, then a more programmable and multichannel dosing pump is likely what you’ll want to aim for. However, there are limited options to aquarists for devices with a single channel of fluid dosing, save for very few, very cheap, and unreliable plastic models.
Leaning more towards steampunk than digital, the Seaside Aquatics dosing pump’s manual control knob is not terribly precise, as in there is no clear indication of how much volume the knob is set to, but simple experimentation can help the user zero-in on a targeted value. Even the instructions state that the most volume that the Seaside peristaltic pump can administer is 100ml when set to its maximum rating, but in our testing we found the pump dispensed well over 10 ml in five seconds.
With some trial and error it was easy to find the setting of the control knob which corresponded to 10ml per minute, which in our testing turned out to be the “3 o’clock” position if the surface of the control knob was a timepiece. For our application the timing of the Seaside dosing pump is being controlled by an Apex controller and if you’re wondering what single additive was worthy of setting up a single channel dosing pump to add to our aquariums, we’ll confess that is was to treat our precious SPS corals to a dedicated doser of their favorite new additive.
It is unlikely that any company will invest the research and development to create a very nice, precise and programmable, single-channel dosing pump. In the absence of a device like that it falls on the more intrepid reefer to use a robust dosing pump like the Seaside single-channel dosing pump and to manually dial in the desired dosing rate by adjustments and careful observation. [Seaside Aquatics]
