Refugium Mixing Tank?

[emissary]

So I'm going to be putting together a water change system for my 180 in-wall consisting of a 40G freshwater drum with auto-topoff and a 55G acrylic mixing tank. It'll go like this:

 

- Drain 40G drum into 55G tank (ball valve).

- Add Salt to 55G. - Wait for the pump to mix it all up.

- Drain appropriate amount of water from main tank (2 ball valves).

- Drain some portion of the 55G tank into the main tank (ball valve).

 

Now... I wonder. What would happen if I put some LR in the mixing tank over the long term? I'm guessing I can't go crushed coral since the salt won't mix well... but could I turn this into a sort of refugium? Would the periodic swing in salinity just kill things in there and lead to the addition of ammonia and other badness into the main tank? Let's say I did water changes every ... 2 weeks or month once things stabilize.

[HowardofNOVA]

Putting the rocks, corals, etc in a tank would be fine, but when you begin adding raw salt to the water. The high concentration will kill everything. Think how many post have you seen over the past where folks have added JUST MIXED SW to their tanks and bleached everything out.

Fresh SW Mix should sit for at least 24hrs before adding to any established tank, 2 days are better to allow it to dissolve properly.

Howard

[lmeyer]

- Drain 40G drum into 55G tank (ball valve).

- Add Salt to 55G. - Wait for the pump to mix it all up.

- Drain appropriate amount of water from main tank (2 ball valves).

- Drain some portion of the 55G tank into the main tank (ball valve).

 

 

A couple of thoughts:

 

I agree w/ Howard, don't think that you want to put anything live in your mixing reservoir.

 

Assuming you don't put anything live in the 55G tank, do you still need a seperate drum or can you just have the float valve going into the 55G tank?

 

How do you plan on driaining the "appropriate" amount of water from the main tank. Best way I know is to have an empty reservoir of the same size as your mix tank. Drain 55G into the empty reservoir and replace it w/ 55G from your tank. You could accomplish the same thing with your drum and tank if you only changed 40G at a time.

[Grav]

Putting LR into the SW mixing tub isn't going to create a Fuge. A fuge would need a source of raw tank water. 1: to consume waste and 2: to produce all the good stuff you want from a fuge.

 

With nothing but new SW to live on, everything that did survive the salinity swings would starve anyway.

[emissary]

Assuming you don't put anything live in the 55G tank, do you still need a seperate drum or can you just have the float valve going into the 55G tank?

 

I could do that... but I like having spare RO water on hand for a couple of reasons. I can top off any other non-connected tanks I have with this water manually, I can mix another 40G after I use the first 55G in the event of a natural (or not so natural) disaster almost immediately.

 

How do you plan on driaining the "appropriate" amount of water from the main tank.  Best way I know is to have an empty reservoir of the same size as your mix tank.  Drain 55G into the empty reservoir and replace it w/ 55G from your tank.  You could accomplish the same thing with your drum and tank if you only changed 40G at a time.

 

Well as water is removed from the system, the water level in the sump decreases. I plan to mark off my sump so that I know exactly when X amount of water has finished leaving the system.