Salt recovery after water change

So I was thinking the other day, to keep costs low and become more sustainable, is it possible to evaporate the water from your most recent water change and reuse the left over salt on a future water change? Does the ammonia, nitrate, etc evaporate with the water or does it stay with the salt? I understand you'd still need to add trace elements and other essentials but as far as the salt goes, can you reuse it?

 

Why even do water changes in the first place? My friend has a reef tank and he just doses. He hasn't water changes in years.

 

Only the water evaporates whatever was in it stays.

 

FWIW~with the trace elements you'll need to replace it would just be cheaper/cleaner to do the water changes.

@DevinH: Totally amazes me how peoples can get away without doing water changes. I've got a friend who hasn't done one on his 75 in 2yrs. Crazy!!!

 

i dont get it either. What about algae and nitrates. Even with.the minimal ount of.algae in my 90 the water and.the. substrate look terrible. I just couldnt.risk all my hard work and investment on a chance the tank wont crash. Btw are these people that dont do wc just running f.o or fowlr.

 

Doesn't seem like a wise decision. Salt isn't overly expensive. This is not worth the hassle.

 

good question. I know you can get away with it in a fowlr (and some mushrooms) because i basically did for a long time. Pretty sure this was a large factor in the crash i experienced after moving it last though... I disturbed the sand bed too which definitely didn't help. Either way, i think at least a monthly wc is advisable. start adding coral well... that's a whole other story imo.

 

He runs a reef tank. I'll grab a pic.

 

The answer is yes you can, but no you shouldn't! As mentioned, salt mixes contain a lot more than just salt. One of the main reasons to do a water change is to replace the elements that were used. Reusing the salt may help with nitrates, but would not be good overall, IMO.

 

If anything, it would make the nitrate concentration worse. Nitrate will remain in the evaporate salt deposit after the water evaporates. Any marine salt that is purchased from a store specifically mentions, "nitrate free". So reusing salt defeats one of the main reasons for doing a water change; to remove nutrients.