Does anybody recylce their water?

[psilentchild]

I was reading on another forum about instead of buying salt and doing water changes just recycle the water by using ozone,lanthanum,carbon and some other stuff.Has anybody tried this?

 

[jeff@zina.com]

It's frequently done in large operations, but not really worth it for the normal hobbyist.

Jeff

 

[psilentchild]

I was planning on building a large shark pond. Why is it not worth it?I was wanting to building a 6k pond if I can recycle the water maybe bigger.

 

[disc1]

Have you priced the lanthanum?

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[gpkozmp]

I would love to see that shark pond. I have never heard of this though.

 

[psilentchild]

From the thread I was reading its about $1400 for a 5 gallon bucket . There are several DIY shark ponds that people have built on sharkraycentral and I know at least one on monsterfishkeepers. The pond I'm talking about would be an indoor pond.

 

[disc1]

Ouch. How much water can you recycle with a 5gallon Bucket? For that much money I could make a lot of salt water and never have to worry about filtering lanthanum back out, or what to do with the waste. It doesn't go down the sink or in the trash you know....

 

[psilentchild]

I don't know how long it last. He just said it use to cost $300 but know it cost $1400 gallon and explain how he does it .But that's a good question. I will pm the guy and ask him. I will also post a link to the thread. I don't know if reefcentral will be cool with it so some of you can see how id does it

 

[psilentchild]

Here is the link. I don't know if the process works or not or if it would be cheaper just to buy salt.Could someone explain the process to me?Disc1 you said something about waste.What waste would there be and what would you do with it?
http://z8.invisionfree.com/Sharks_and_Rays/index.php?showtopic=1860

 

[psilentchild]

Anybody got an idea on how this process works?

 

[jeff@zina.com]

I was planning on building a large shark pond. Why is it not worth it?

A 6,000 gallon shark pond is not the average hobbyist...

Cost is the issue. You can buy a lot of salt, or make your own, before reconstituting sea water becomes cost effective.

Jeff

 

[psilentchild]

So would it be worth it for a 6k?How do you make your own salt?How much is that going to cost?

 

[disc1]

Once you use the lanthanum to remove phosphate, you are going to want to remove that lanthanum clay. In saltwater there will be some exchange between cations in the water and lanthanum in the clay. This will result in leaching of lanthanum into the water. So you don't want to just dump that much lanthanum into your pond, you would want to treat the water and then remove that clay. That lanthanum is toxic to you and your fish. It replaces calcium and can cause all kinds of havok. You will have to find an approved method for disposing of that amount of lanthanum.

 

[psilentchild]

From what I'm understanding in the thread I read that's what the carbon and a filter sock is for.

 

[disc1]

Short term yes, but eventually you are going to build up a large amount of clay in the system if you don't pull it out. It may not be legal to wash the socks if they contain lanthanum. You'll need to look into epa regs.

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[psilentchild]

So how do you make your own salt and how much is that going to cost me?

 

[shifty51008]

For those who are interested, the following artificial seawater recipe is taken from "Chemical Oceanography" by Frank Millero. It makes a recipe that matches 35 ppt seawater in terms of major ions, but does not try to match all minor and trace elements, most of which will be present as impurities in the major elements.

23.98 g sodium chloride
5.029 g magnesium chloride
4.01 g sodium sulfate
1.14 g calcium chloride
0.699 g potassium chloride
0.172 g sodium bicarbonate
0.100 g potassium bromide
0.0254 g boric acid
0.0143 g strontium chloride
0.0029 g sodium fluoride
Water to 1 kg total weight.

also taken from HighlandReefer

You will need to buy the salts in large amounts (at least 50 lb bags in bulk) to begin to compete with the cost of salt mixes. You will need a place to store these in a protected area. You will need a mechanical method to properly mix these salts to properly combine them in large quantities. Trying to mix a small batch by hand is hard enough, much less larger batches. Thus, you will need to put out a considerable amount of money to initially do this.

It would be easier to buy a pallet (or several pallets) of salt mix and would be about as cheap or perhaps cheaper. Perhaps a group-buy at a local club would be better if you don't have the finances to invest in pallets of salt mix.

 

[psilentchild]

The cheapest place I know to get salt is drfostersmith and they want $43 for a 200 gallon box.If I was to do a 20% water change that would be 1200 gallons a month.Which is $264 a month and $3168 a year in salt.Would it be cheaper than that?What would be my cheaper option in the long run?I don't see a big problem paying $264 a month but I was wanting to get a black tip reef shark which would require a bigger tank.Which would require a whole lot more money a month on salt.

 

[shifty51008]

i don't know what the cheaper option is as I have never priced out individual elements for making my own salt. that would be something you will have to do

 

[disc1]

Someone once told me that sea world uses pallets of IO. I don't know if that's true, but I do know that if it was cheap to keep a reef shark we would all have one.

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