The Nano Doser 1 is a very different kind of dosing device from Saltwater Conversions, a company which was the first, and still the only real source in North America for the famous Japanese Mame products. It took us a while to wrap our head around how the Nano Doser 1 is presented but it basically falls under the category of a syringe pump. As the name implies, syringe pumps use the depression of a fluid to deliver the most itty bitty amounts of volumes over a period of days or weeks.
We didn’t even know that dosing micro volumes of additives to reef tank was a thing until the nano Doser 1 opened up the floodgates of opportunities in this regard. If the Nano Doser 1 looks completely new and foreign, that’s because it is a device that’s been repurposed from medical applications. Saltwater Conversions has converted a model of portably syringe pump called the Graseby MS26 to reliably deliver between 0.07 and 1.0 ml of additive per day in a very small, one might say, nano form factor.
The Nano Doser 1 is made from repurposed syringe drivers which means that this type of technology has already had plenty of thorough testing and evaluation to ensure that accurate doses are administered. The Graseby MS26 is among one of the smallest of such syringe pumps in the portable category running only on a 9v alkaline battery, meaning that this tool is ideal for delivering a very tiny dose of some carbon source or other important chemical to the smallest of reef tanks.
The Nano Doser 1 is compatible with using a few different syringe sizes so that users can dial in how much or how little fluid they want to dose to their itty bitty reef tank, and for how long. To help with the dosing, settings and calculations Saltwater Conversions has provided an online calculator that will tell you exactly how to set the Nano Doser 1 according to your requirements.
If your mind is already jumping ahead at what else the Nano Doser 1 could do, let us share with you the possibility of using this syringe pump to dose chilled food. Per the Nano Doser 1 spec sheet, “Some substances may require cooling to prevent spoilage. A USB can cooler can commonly be found on online auction sites and be used to cool the pump plus its contents. The pump should never be cooled below 10°C (50°F)“.
The Nano Doser 1 sounds like a great tool for dosing certain additives and maybe even foods in the tiniest amounts but don’t go trying to dose any two part solutions with this. At $136 for a complete kit of the Syringe Pump and five different syringe sizes, Don’t go getting ideas of lining up 3 or more of these things to get your nano-balling dosing setup complete. In addition to dosing the most minute volumes of additives for nano tanks, we could see the Nano Doser 1 seeing some action in dosing extremely minute amounts of some trace elements that testing by Triton Analysis might reveal to be beneficial on its own in the future, like Cobalt, but we are a long way from that future yet.
The Nano Doser 1 is a very novel re-application of a medical device for reef tanks from Saltwater Conversions and we are very curious to see if this type of nano dosing technique will prove to be useful for small and large tanks in the future. [Saltwater Conversions]
