recycle water change water

when you take a shower for instance, how much are you using?

I 'dumped' 20g of pretty nice DT water into the drain pipe just yesterday.

I do feel slightly better abut only doing WC's every 2 months or so, whether it needs it or not!

My SPS are all pristine, etc., after hearing it working for others - the longer interval WC that is, I tried it and it works for me!

 

It's those trace elements that would be missing that would be difficult to add correct type and volume. Don't think it would be worth the risk.

I've heard that a small amount of saltwater (quart once a year) poured at the base of fruit trees actually helps them grow better.

 

i believe it would remove the salt and yes would make a killing

 

not saying im going to do this just trying to have a discussion.....the only way i could see this working is if the recycled water was used on a fish only or softy tank(if you dosed iodine)....i feel like on very large systems which are fish only it could be beneficial and worth it maybe....i would say systems that are 200+ gallons where a 20% WC would be 40 or more gallons type of thing.....maybe someone could set up some kind of service where you dropped off or had WC water picked up run through a large fuge system and repackaged as saltwater for a fish only tank or something?

 

I have a feeling you'd be replacing the filters much more often though.

Honestly if you wanna save money, either work on having a giant sump somehow or lowly stock the tank. I currently do a 3 gallon bucket water change a month with my current setup and have never had ammonia or any high parameters when doing weekly checks. Besides my velvet damsel being fairly big, none of my fish are near being full grown though. But if I had a 200+ gallon tank, I'd squeeze in a 200+ sump down below. I like not having to worry about water changes and bio-load much and having more water volume (increasing sump size) seems to save in the long run.

 

i honestly wouldnt do this.

However, we do something that is kind of like recycling water. We keep our SPS/LPS tank water as pristine as possible. We dose daily and do frequent water changes.

We also have a NPS tank, a zoa/mushroom tank and an angler tank. We do a big water change from the SPS tank and depending on the nitrates of that water, we will then use that water to do a water change in our other tanks, especially in the NPS tank. We will only do this if our nitrates are testing around 10 in the sps tank, however now that we have it under control, it isnt an issue. We dose regularly so that water is good water. When you are dealing with NPS tank, adding nitrates that are 10 to it is a great water change!

 

I dont know about the water but you could reuse the salt by evaporating the water out and using teh salt that is left.

then you can collect the evap water in a funnel mechinism vary similar to a moonshine still ( I know I am back woods ;D) then in turn use this collected water in a rodi system, top of water in another tank, or reuse in teh old salt mix and add salt/water as needed to get teh correct balances for the water.

I will then take it step farthe by saying that during the evap process you could run that water through prefilters that take out the phos,ni-rate,ni-rite or even dose with prime or a similar type of chemical in a holding tank to get the levels within par.

same with the salt just use a little and dilute teh rest with new salt to mitigat teh effects.

phew that was alot to type lol, and I copyright this ;D

 

+1. I would imagine you would exhaust your RO/DI filters very quickly if you filtered salt water.

Your suggestion was to take the water out of your tank, put it in a fuge, and get the bad nutrients out of it. Others suggesting supplementing the water with calcium (plus alkalinity and mag obviously) if it is a reef tank.

Here is a much better way of achieving the same goal (saving saltwater). Instead of setting up a separate fuge, connect the fuge to your DT. This will remove phosphates and nitrates. Additionally, you could add GFO or phosban to remove additional phosphates. You would also add a skimmer. Next, if it is a reef tank, start dosing Ca, alk, and mag. This will replenish beneficial nutrients. If you do these things, you won't have to do water changes as frequently. Thus, instead of taking the water out, virtually cleaning it and replenishing beneficial nutrients, you will be making it last longer (not to mention saving valuable time). In the end, you are saving/recycling saltwater either way, just with less work. Lol this is how most people do it.

 

agreed but hey I want to overcomplicate thing ;D

 

Lol I overcomplicate everything too (for example: the simple task of replacing my RO/DI filters turns into rebuilding the RO/DI unit because its concept was flawed), but this method is pretty solid