making your own salt mix! again!

[ctenophors rule]

so, i remember a thread a few motnhs back about mixing up your own salt mix, and it was soon apparent, thet it simply would not work feasably in a small scale system.

but what if you got a big 1,000 gallon barrel, filled it with salt water, and allowed it to evaporate (maybe help it along in the begining w some fire in the beggining)

would that salt be perfect and safe?

do people do this already?

it certaintly seems like a great idea. 1,000 gallons of salt water will leave enough salt for 1,000+ gallons of aquarium salt water!

cheap and simple.

now, feel free to tear my idea to pieces! rip me a new one!

 

[jg900rr]

interesting theory.... Do ppl actually do this?

 

[benr]

It takes an enormous amount of energy to exaporate water, probably would not be worth the cost unless you could use evaporation ponds and solar energy. It would still have to be filtered and kept clean during the evaporation process. Maybe as a side stream in a saltwater to drinking water plant someware down in Baja.

 

[greenbean36191]

This process won't work for making aquarium salt. As the water evaporates you start forming precipitates that will not go back into solution when you add water back to the residue. You would end up with salt water that is deficient in key components like Ca and carbonate.

 

[Superstretch18]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15187327#post15187327 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by greenbean36191
This process won't work for making aquarium salt. As the water evaporates you start forming precipitates that will not go back into solution when you add water back to the residue. You would end up with salt water that is deficient in key components like Ca and carbonate.

Beat me to it.

Also, if you have a container large enough to store quantities of NSW, why not just store and use the NSW?

 

[ctenophors rule]

thanks guys, that makes a lot of sense, too.

 

[wschang812]

ive actually heard people using natural sea water for water changes.

 

[bsagecko]

NSW will work alot better than the evaporation idea......just make the change naturally.....

The best way to do this would be to have 1000g or 5000g holding containers and then just use the natural seawater to give a 15% water change every 5 days or so........it should keep all your levels at the right spot without having to dose or do any chemistry crap as long as the NSW is good solid water and no containments....I would recommend puttin the NSW through a strainer type filter to remove anything big.......but the holding tanks must have light...and movement at all times.....otherwise the decay from the micro animals during holding time will destroy the water quality........most systems like this usually just let the water run through the system continously....so just cycling the 5000g of water through your DT........and then replacing 1000g every week or so...........but if your going to have 5000g might as well make it your display....me thinking green house...lol

 

[billsreef]

If your close enough to good SW, you can just use a few dedicated 5 gallon jugs

 

[digitaldaydream]

Some one posted a thread of what to do with desalinization plant waste here in Florida and the ramifications of returning it into the environment. Perhaps now we can enter into the realm of further reducing the content to salt crystal and adding the missing elements to supply the aquarium industry. I am also pretty sure salt is harvested and ingredients are already added in this way.

From what I understand beach and tidal zones are like mother natures "skimmers". I think a boat might be needed to get to cleaner water. Here on the East coast of Florida thats a pretty decent boat trip to the beautiful waters of the gulf stream with no guarantee of introducing some bad parasite or disease.

 

[muddysr5]

I have seen a post in the large reef tank build forum (I am pretty sure) about using natural sea water for your tank. There is a guy in Cali who actually would store like 1500-1800 g in a holding tank in his yard (you should see the build - UNBELIEVABLE!!!) from one of the Universities in the area that use the natural sea water for research, and give it away to whomever wants some and had the capacity to truck/haul it away.

I have also heard that you need to make sure you know the rise and fall of the tides. I guess when the tide is coming in, that brings cleaner water from deeper parts of the ocean, but you would need a boat to go out and get it, as you can't just take the water from the beach (not sure why).

 

[ctenophors rule]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15394469#post15394469 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by muddysr5
I have seen a post in the large reef tank build forum (I am pretty sure) about using natural sea water for your tank. There is a guy in Cali who actually would store like 1500-1800 g in a holding tank in his yard (you should see the build - UNBELIEVABLE!!!) from one of the Universities in the area that use the natural sea water for research, and give it away to whomever wants some and had the capacity to truck/haul it away.

I have also heard that you need to make sure you know the rise and fall of the tides. I guess when the tide is coming in, that brings cleaner water from deeper parts of the ocean, but you would need a boat to go out and get it, as you can't just take the water from the beach (not sure why).

can't get it from the beach (normaly) because of the polutants...but if you get it from atop a bridge, while tide is coming in, and your near the middle/deepest fastest moving area of water...then go for it!

 

[ctenophors rule]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15391793#post15391793 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by digitaldaydream
Some one posted a thread of what to do with desalinization plant waste here in Florida and the ramifications of returning it into the environment. Perhaps now we can enter into the realm of further reducing the content to salt crystal and adding the missing elements to supply the aquarium industry. I am also pretty sure salt is harvested and ingredients are already added in this way.

From what I understand beach and tidal zones are like mother natures "skimmers". I think a boat might be needed to get to cleaner water. Here on the East coast of Florida thats a pretty decent boat trip to the beautiful waters of the gulf stream with no guarantee of introducing some bad parasite or disease.

mother natues skimmer???? mother nature is set up good enough that it dont need a skimmer.....if only we could be so grand.......or set up massive tanks for small amounts of fish with lots of detrivours. and algaes, and a few cryptic zones filled with bivalves and sponges, maybe prefiltered by an aptasia and majano filter, and then uv sterilized back into system.......

 

[lombard0]

I believe I have created a similar thread in the Chemistry forum related to the topic months ago. Here in the Far East, good saltmix (which are imported ones) really cost an "arm and a leg" so to speak. And figured that "rocksalt" (made from NSW) are abundant and really dirt cheap around my area, I believe that this might be a good alternative. To give you guys an idea, rocksalt that weighs about 5 kilos costs just a little over one USD in the "wet market", which is good for a 35gal tank with an SG of approx. 35ppt (or 1.026).

I have already started this little experiment in a small tank (about 35gal) but I still need to tweak stuff here and there. And yes, there are precipitates (powdered form which I assumed carbonate stuff) but I address that by taking out those precipitates and mix it with small amount of vinegar or acetic acid in a separate container).

One major issue that I can think off is that different batch of rocksalt will probably give different water parameter readings. So test kit is a must in this approach.


Cheers!

 

[billsreef]

Rock salt will be missing a lot of necessary elements. Surprisingly the simply solar evaporation method that is used to produce most rock salts will yield mostly NaCl with little else. Same goes for the mined salts from ancient evaporated sea beds. Fritz does make a supplement mix designed to go with those cheap rock salts to make them a complete SW mix. You might want to look into that.

 

[lombard0]

Great. Thanks for the info Bill. Will surely check it out.

 

[nes999]

where i used to live they grew coffe and they did everything wet and they had a massive area that was about 1 inch deep they'd flood this massive area till the whole place was covered and in 2 days to 3 days it was bone dry

 

[Runfrumu]

Cheap and simple? First you would have to get the 1000 gallons of saltwater from the ocean to wherever you plan on doing the evaporation, then you would have to have a clean container large enough to hold all of the water and have it in a place where it wouldnt get rained or get contaminated. All of the right there would be enough to keep most people from doing it, but then you would have to wait for all of that water to evaporate, then clean all the dried salt from then container.

I'm guessing it would take several months for the water to evaporate naturally, or if you use fire, still a month. But if you use fire your going to have to have a metal container large enough to hold 1000 gallons, and I bet that wouldnt be cheap.

All of that for around the amount of Instant Ocean you can buy for a little over 300 bucks.