Reclamation tank

[meco65]

I have a 29 Gal. Bio-Cube Reef, and a 70 Gal. FOWLR, and a 20 Gal. FOWLR. So I seldom do more than 5gal. to 10 gal. water changes at a time. My idea is to set up a 40 to 50 gal. tank as a reclamation tank. When I do water changes on my Reef tank the water is at 0 nitrate so I can use that water for a FOWLR tank change. Some times the FOWLR tank can get up to 20 ppm. nitrate. So my thoughts were to have the reclamation tank with a lot of (Chaetomorpha, Mangroves) and whatever plants I can find for SW, to use up all the nitrates out of the water polishing the water, than I should be able to use that water to do FOWLR tank water changes putting the old water back in the reclamation tank to be polished again keeping as much saltwater as possible out of the environment . What do you think.

 

[ScarletReef]

This is an interesting thought, It sounds very plausible with enough macro/light. Let us know how it works,

 

[ChadTheSpike]

That sounds like a pretty great idea, I vote for chaeto over mangroves (faster growth)... you may need to run a bunch of carbon to prevent yellowing of the water, but I like It. I cant wait to hear how it goes! Good luck!

 

[Agu]

This is an interesting thought, It sounds very plausible with enough macro/light. Let us know how it works,

That's what I thought too. It seems to me a skimmer on the reclamation tank would also go a long way towards removing organics. I wouldn't count on the rock and algae to "clean" the water by itself.

 

[meco65]

The carbon and the skimmer are good ideas, Ill add them to my list.
For light I was thinking a DIY say 4-6500k daylight bulbs. And I do have a 29 Gal fresh water that I could switch to salt, and I have sand, HOB filter for carbon, some base rock, and a seaclone 100. That might be a good start.

 

[ChadTheSpike]

What purpose does the sand and rock add?

My thoughts are that running it as a BB tank with nothing but macro and a skimmer would maximize the export of nutrients while keeping the system as easy to maintain and clean as possible (any detritus that accumulates would be very easy to siphon off).

 

[meco65]

The detritus should not be a problem as the tank will not have any stock. Wouldn’t the rock and sand have Nitrifying bacteria that would help decrease nitrate, helping to change the nitrate to nitrogen.

 

[ChadTheSpike]

Sure it will, but the chaeto will also reduce the nitrate converting it to growth that can be removed (unless its nutrient limited by something else).
I guess you could accomplish nitrate reduction with only the sand bed, carbon and skimmer.
You make a good point that there wont be much detritus, but there will still be some (at the very least coming from the chaeto). The rock is a place for it to accumulate that is hard to get at for cleaning.

 

[meco65]

Good point on the chaeto (droppings ). LOL.

 

[meco65]

Wow