Water change thought

[El Camaron]

this may be a stupid question but...

 

just wondering if there has been any invetion as to replenish the water in your tank with all the nescesary trace elements minerals as wells as salinity without having to do a weekly water change?

 

Water can go stale if left alone but its being churned in our reef tanks so thats not happening but all the elements are being absorved by the corals.

 

so rather than doing multiple water changes just add a mixture of elements to replenish whast lost, all salt buckets already come with what it should be as in PPM for a reef tank, the main issue would be testing for it all but with the ability of the Apex controllers and others similar could that be integrated?

 

(yes i know water is fairly cheap but sometimes seems like a waste)

 

just a thought

[Noobalicious]

doesn't dosing and top off do what you just described?

[El Camaron]

it hels in maintaining but does not replenish most of the other trace elements.

[Neilan]

I know a guy in the FW realm that setup a replenishment system that I guess could work for SW too if thought through properly.

 

Basically he setup an overflow that dumps into a drain, and once a week he just pumped fresh water in. In theory that could work for SW too (you wouldn't want it running constantly as it would overcome your evaporation and your salinity would fall) but it could work in a controlled manner.

[traveller7]

A similar product exists, not cheap, but in use in large service tanks:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-04/pr/index.php

[El Camaron]

very interesting, thanks for posting that traveller7.

[traveller7]

very interesting, thanks for posting that traveller7.

Most certainly

 

I am always looking for ways to make maintenance simple and automated ;>)

 

fwiw: there are some continuous water change methods out there also, if you have a floor/sump height drain.

Edited March 4, 2010 by traveller7

[lhcorals]

I guess their are ways to replenish trace elements. If you were to do it that way how would you ever get the bad stuff out of the water. I feel if you are going to put the kind of money into the tanks why not do the water changes. Not knocking anybody's idea's just wandering why take the chance?

[Origami]

I think that Tropic Marin makes a salt mix that is NaCl free. It's trace element rich and is one of the components of the Balling method.

 

As Lynn mentions, though, water changes not only replenish depleted trace elements, but it also removes accumulating pollutants not removed by skimming or other conventional means.

[El Camaron]

Thanks for the responses, what other polutants are you refering to? What if there was a DSB plus a skimmer, carbon etc wouldn't that remove most ? the rest would be via snails, pods, star fish basically a good clean up crew. I am just thinking outside the box, not necesarily doing it, just a water change thought.

[lhcorals]

I know when i do my water changes i use a turkey baster to get destritus and any other sediment out of or off my rock work. I have a lot of flow in the 265 and i can not believe i still get that much destritus off the rock. If you have nitrates or phosphates in your tank, just adding trace elements to your water will not get rid of them. I think over time you would get a really high reading on nitrates. I am just guessing here so anyone have any thing to add ( if either i am wrong or right ) would be great. That is just a couple of things that could be removed, i am sure their are more.

[davelin315]

There's a product called Sea Lab No.28 that claims to replenish trace elements through a dissolving block of compounds. I have used it in the past, but have no idea if it actually works or not (it's been probably 15 years since I last used a block of it). I have some now at school that were donated and have used it a few times, but have not gone through the checking phases to monitor trace elements so really it's use is sporadic at best and I never use a lot of the block at once.

[Origami]

Thanks for the responses, what other polutants are you refering to? What if there was a DSB plus a skimmer, carbon etc wouldn't that remove most ? the rest would be via snails, pods, star fish basically a good clean up crew. I am just thinking outside the box, not necesarily doing it, just a water change thought.

 

There are, for example, other dissolved organics that are not easily taken up either by carbon or skimmers. Skimmers, for example, work principally on organic molecules with water-loving and water-hating (hydrophyllic and hydrophobic) ends. These collect at the air-water interface of the bubbles in the skimmer with the water loving end outside the bubble and the water-hating end inside. That's how skimmers work in essence. Many organics are not like that at all, so skimmers tend to be rather ineffective at removing these compounds.

 

Heavy metals are another compound that can build up.

[Happyfeet]

I remember reading an article about a guy who hasn't done a water change in years. He does A LOT of dosing on A LOT of different things. He runs a Turf Algae scrubber and carbon and a refugium as his form of filtration otherwise the nitrate would build up. I remember him commenting it was a lot more expensive and water changes are really the way to go for now.