Recycling Water Changes

[narwal]

Has anyone ever addressed the issue of recycling the waste water from water changes?

I'm fairly new to all this, so maybe this is silly, but we go through an awful lot of water in our hobby. If it was fresh water it could be utilized in all kinds of ways like watering plants and lawns, etc. But we SALINTE fresh water on purpose, then what? - dump it out when we do water changes.

Is there any way one could recycle the changed water? Treat it somehow to make it suitable for the aquarium again?

Like I said, I don't know a lot about this aspect, but I for one would be willing to pay a reasonable amount to not dump this water down the drain. Heck - if you could treat the water to remove nitrates/nitrites I would do it even if it cost as much or a bit more than making up fresh saltwater?

Any opinions?

 

[I'mRisenAquaRat]

http://www.seavisions.com/prod02.htm

 

[possys]

I'll like to know too.

 

[narwal]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14389037#post14389037 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by possys
I'll like to know too.

Check out link in the post above yours. It's fascinating. When I have some time I'm going to try and do a financial analysis of savings in hard costs (salt), factor in something for time and try to assign something based on the premise that perfect water all the time should reduce livestock loss or at least prolong life. The bottom line would be a compelling case if it pans out. Of course, we would still get satisfaction knowing we are conserving fresh water and not dumping salinated water back into the system.

If they could only get the system down to under $1000 I'd buy one today.

 

[micstarz]

Plant mangroves in your garden?

 

[trueperc]

This is an interesting idea, I mean if you where to say, run carbon and say a phos remover and buffer the alk and CA, could it be reusable. You would have to use a lots less that treating the whole tank.

 

[narwal]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14414049#post14414049 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by trueperc
This is an interesting idea, I mean if you where to say, run carbon and say a phos remover and buffer the alk and CA, could it be reusable. You would have to use a lots less that treating the whole tank.

I've been looking into this unit in detail. It seems quite amazing.

The bottom line is that what it does is do very small water changes. You can set it to dialyse up to 50 gallons a day, but that depends on your tank size. If you want to do a 100% water change every month you would just set it to do your tank size/30 each day. Each day it cycles 48 time and processes 1/48th of the daily volume. For a 100 gallon tank that works out to .069 gallons or about 8 ounces at a time. That's great for maintaining stability.

If only the price wasn't so high.