cycled water shelf life?

[rollinnoland]

Have had 150 tank running for 2 years now, going great. I bought my dream tank off someone on this site,its a 210 leemar:spin1: so heres my question im tiling my floor and cant set up tank for couple weeks he saved me 80 gallons of his water in containers do i have to put powerheads in each bucket to keep water good are can i just let it set in garage really dont want to start another cycle so was going to add water from both tanks. Any help or advise would be great

 

[jerpa]

If it is just water you will not be avoiding a cycle by reusing it. The bacteria that process ammonia are mainly surface dwelling and grow on substrates and rock. In order to reuse the water you will need some sort of circulation. You could use powerheads or something as simple as a few airstones. Personally i would just make up fresh saltwater when the time comes. You will have water from the old tank anyway so you wont be starting with all new water.

 

[coralsnaked]

Hummm?

We have had discussions on how long you can safely hold freshly mixed saltwater. And the conclusion was if there were no imputities in the water, it could be safely stored in a food grade approved closed container in the dark at ambient temperature for many weeks without the need of a powerhead or heater.

However, water from a tank will contain many impurities from nitrates to PO4, as well as many other dissolved solids. With that said I would have to conclude that two weeks of no filtration and oxygen depletion may cause chemical inbalances in the water as well as unwanted bacterial growth. Best bet would be to refrigerate the water in an old refrigerator as many laboratoies do with the study of natural sea water.

Merry Skerry

 

[bertoni]

If it's water from an active tank, I'd likely pitch it. Otherwise, you'll need to keep a powerhead in each container, most likely, or the organics in the water will decay anaerobically.