Hmm good point. I'm unsure of how it would look having the water level drop in the display... that said, combining a CSD and RCSD could produce some really cool effects I bet. I don't think I'll explore it though, because I don't want to buy a high flow air pump.
I'm leaning more and more heavily to using solenoids. I think that I could avoid potential problems with them if I just recognise that they have a limited life and replace them every so many thousand cycles. Part of the reason for this is that I am really considering building a controller using an Arduino. Mostly for my LED lights (got some heatsinks and fans yesterday!) but it has so much potential... temperature control, timing solenoids, etc.
http://www.arduino.cc/ if anyone is interested... it will take some time but from what I've been reading it's actually pretty easy to program these things, and using one of these is right up the alley of someone who's into DIY stuff and is a little handy with a soldering iron.
It's CSD or solenoid... I'll be happier with the solenoid in the long run but the CSD will be cheaper. And won't require me to learn a programming language (which I'll likely be doing anyhow, so this point is really moot). IF I can find an online source for reef safe solenoids I'll experiment with them at least, anyone know of a source for something suitable? A 1" one would be great but I doubt if solenoids come in a size this big. I can use more than one
