Recycling Reusing water with Chaeto algae

[Tecnomantis]

Every week I do a 5 gallon water change. I have been keeping the water I take from my 33 gallon tank into another tank in which i have A LOT of chaeto algae, sand and live rock. I just have it there with a calcium reactor conected to a small water pump which does both, moves the calcium reactor and keep the water movement.



Keeping the water pump costs only $3.23 a year in electricity 4watt pump. I took 4 gallons out of the chaeto algae tank. Put it in a bucket, add 1 gallon of recently mixed water and test the parameters and they are very similar to the parameters of recently mixed water.



Water parameters (4 gallon Recycle water + 1gallon recently mixed water +additive bacteria that is very cheap)



nitrates and nitrites are in 0ppm

ph is set in 8.0

magnesium 1300

phospate basically 0

ammonia is 0

Calcium 430 ppm

Alkalinity 100-125 ppm



In top of all that, I keep bioballs on both tanks, and replace the bioball bag every water change so the bacteria is constantly transfering from the tank to the recycling tank.



I have been doing this for 2 months without any significant changes in my livestock, coral continue to grow, no casualties in my fishes.

I am saving 208 gallons of water+ the cost of the salt a year if this thing works.
If you have experience please tell me if I am missing something, take into account that I am running this experiment on my display tank. I contiue to do tests every other day to make sure that if some parameters are off i do a 50% water change to save the tank, but I am not noticing any negative impact on my tank. At this point 100% of the water on my tank is recycled. Am I missing something?

 

[Ron Reefman]

The first thing you are missing, or you didn't say you were addressing, is trace elements. You are not doing new saltwater and water changes, so you are not adding in new trace elements.

That said, a number of reefers, myself included, have been know to not do many (or any) water changes or go through all the transferring of water that you are doing.

Finally, after just 2 months you are seeing no issues? Two months in a reef tank is the blink of an eye. Tell me how well it's doing in 2 years. And it's very possible that in 2 years it will still be doing just fine.

Your system may work OK for a long time. You watch your parameters closely and you could be adding some trace elements back in via other means like feeding or the Ca reactor. It's an interesting experiment. And it might become a bit bigger issue on a bigger tank. Doing a 5g water change on a 33g tank is pretty painless no matter how you do it (your recycle system or normal new water change). Transferring your system to a 180g tank becomes a lot more work and requires more chaeto, a bigger Ca reactor and a bigger 2nd tank.

 

[Tecnomantis]

That's quite an inside. I appreciate you took the time to share your thoughts on my experiment. Based on your recommendation I ordered some trace elements (seachmen), the electric bill and the supplements still are way cheaper than water changes and salt.

I just hate throwing 260 gallons of water a year, so I am looking for a way to reduce the amount of water needed to keep a reef tank.

from where I am standing there are 2 options:
1. Do constant water changes and avoid using supplements.
2. Don't do water changes but feed the tank with supplements.
Dosing is expensive requires a controller most people with smaller set ups will use water changes, I want to do a little bit of both and if it works start telling other people.

I have everything set up on my experiment with a 15 gallon recycling tank. I have it on the balcony so I don't use electricity to grow the algae I use solar light, the tank itself is a green chaeto mess with a cpr media reactor, with reef media from seachmen as well. 2 turbo snails to keep the algae from growing into the tank glass.

I wanted to ask something else if you don't mind, do you know anything else to reduce nitrates? Or something else natural I can use?

In 1 week my display tank goes from 0 nitrates to 5ppm (i have a crowed tank) In just 2 day the chaeto brings the nitrates to 0 with the media reactor replenishing the calcium and magnesium in 3 days.

My brother started doing the same thing with a 25 gallon recycling tank for his 100 gallon tank, he does 15 gallons water changes every week (+800 gallons of water a year) since he refuses to buy a dose controller.

So far I can tell I can successfully recycle 75% of the water (less evaporation of course) which ins't bad, but I want to get it to 90%.

 

[ReefsandGeeks]

Altough you may be able to get every measurable water perameter to match what you'd have with newly mixed water, there are still many things that can't be measured that are likely still off in your recycled water. Like reefman said, trace elements are the first thing to come to mind.

I'll admit, I do dose trace elements in my tank because I do go longer than I should without doing a water change, but without being able to measure them, you don't know what the usage rate is, or if anything is building up in excess in the tank. If you have trace elememts that are building up due to feeing, there's nothing you can add to the tank to drop the numbers, only a water change will do it.

What I do, is a small 5-10% water change maybe once a month simply to replace water I suck up with periodic cleaning. And I add trace elements to help ease my mind a bit about not doing larger water changes. However, I do occasionally do a 30-50% water change once or twice a year, which helps bring everything back to where it should be to mitigate the slow drifting away due to water changes. I do notice an improvement is polyp extension and overall coral appearance after these large changes, so to me this means that my water must slowly drift away over the months.

Another thought, why do you change out water, and clean it up separately from your tank just to put it back in? Why don't you just plumb in your cheato setup as an online refugum so it can constantly clean your tank water?

 

[MarkW64]

Another thought, why do you change out water, and clean it up separately from your tank just to put it back in? Why don't you just plumb in your cheato setup as an online refugum so it can constantly clean your tank water?

This was my question also.
Plumbed together you have a similar setup to what many people run with a refugium/cheato "filter" -- of course most still do water changes too.

 

[Tecnomantis]

I do have a sump, the water in my tank can go up to 1 month without water changes. I do weekly water changes so I can make smaller water changes like %15-%10.

But 15% of the water used in my tank goes to waste every week, meaning 260 gallons of water waste every year.

The purpose of the experiment is to recycle as much water as possible from the experiment, the water in a sump (depending on the return pump) will spend much less than an hour. The water in the recycling tank spends 1 week, with chaeto algae, and a media reactor replenishing all the used up calcium and magenesium.

Where I used to waste 5 gallons a week + evaporation. Now I am just wasting 1 gallon a week, recycling 4 gallons.

 

[Ron Reefman]

Tecnomantis, I think you missed the point devastator and MarkW were making. If you hooked up the Ca reactor and the cheato refugium directly into your DT and sump, you wouldn't be doing any water changes, just top off for evaporation. That's basically what I did for the better part of 6 years with my old 400g system (180g reef, 75g gorgonian tank, 180g sump/refugium/DSB).

BTW, you asked about another way to reduce nitrates, try a DSB (Deep Sand Bed). Best if it's at least 6" deep and has slow water flow over it. Some people do it as a remote unit in a 5g bucket.

 

[Tecnomantis]

Thanks everyone once again for your input. The problem will be I will still need to do water changes, the clean up process takes more than a few hours, it takes days. Plus I will need to make room from it near my tank. As a recycling tank it is far away from the DT since I will need the water once a week.

I will add trace elements and a 5" sand bed next week. I had it in 2. I contacted a cousin who is a chemist, we will do a full parameters check along with a bacteria culture to compare both water parameters in full.

Also I will do a 50% water change every six months with recently mixed water. devastator007 made an excellent point.