Reusing water change water

[lillyd]

This is probably going to sound silly but in this day and age of drought and restricted water consumption, is there a way to turn our syphoned water from our water changes back into reusable water. Remove all the waste and ammonia and make it clean again so to speak. Especially in a breeding situation when you are doing constant water changes. Does anyone have any ideas?

[DiscusDave]

I think the best way of recycling is to put it into tank for use in the garden.

[lpiasente]

Not so silly lillyd, I wondered the same thing myself but I wondered if I could use the water from my discus tank and put it in my community tank?

[Hollowman]

Hi lilly,

Any water you are changing should not contain any ammonia, your filter should have already changed it into nitrIte and then into less toxic nitrAtes by the nitrogen cycle. What you cannot see or test for are what we call DOC's or Dissolved Organic Compounds. I have found a link that explains it in a bit more detail.

http://www.aquascapingworld.com/magazine/May08/Dissolved-Organic-Compounds-Explained.html

Basically as far as we are concerned these DOC's will affect the growth rates of juvenile fish, and by not removing this build up through water changing will stunt fish. It will also, i think as explained in the link, harbour bacteria, which in the end will have the effect of stressing the fish and lead to illness.

I know in Aus right now things are tough, but unless you want to go down the Ozone route, there will be no substitute for water changing.

hth

H :)

[lillyd]

Ok i do sort of understand that, but what I thiking about is that there are water treatment plants that turn waste water into drinking water, surely there is a technology that is adabtable to our needs to do the same sort of thing.

Is protein skimming going to help get rid of the solids. The other idea my husband ad I have been tossig up is evaporation. In theroy evaporation leaves behind all solids.

Just some ideas

Cheers Jane

[Basti]

would reverse osmosis be an option?

[lillyd]

Yes I think it would but you are still wasting a lot of the water, I was thinking more along the lines of being able to use 80 - 100% of it. But it is definetly an option

[Bill Tune]

I was putting my siphoned water on the rose bed, however I have some concerns as I use kH generator & don't want to make the soil too alkaline....

[ILLUSN]

There are ways to reuse your watse water, but the simplest is for use on the garden(i do this and it's probably why I'm the only guy on the street with a bumper veggi harvest), if you wre to try and resuse your water your best bet would be to drain it into a waste tank and have an ro unit on it, that way you will be able to reclaim ~10% (for me that would be 100L/day), 90% will still have to go to watse. the bigest problem with RO is that it is expensive, interms of power and maintenace.

large scale water recylcing using ozone and various treatment plants ( a water recycling plant usually has atleast 4 stages that the water must pass through before it is "clean" again) is probably beyond the scale of most hobiests, you'd ave be turing over at least 100000L/day to make it cost efective over even a medium term (asuming the the curent price of $1.60/kL stays constant).

[Old Dave]

This is probably going to sound silly but in this day and age of drought and restricted water consumption, is there a way to turn our syphoned water from our water changes back into reusable water. Does anyone have any ideas?

Bottle it, give it a fancy name and find a few people to say it cures excessive hair (ever seen a hairy fish?) / infertility (worked for the fish) /memory loss (fish protein is supposed to be a good memory aid) /other :wink: think little blue tablets :wink: .
The export market awaits! :wave

After a while you will be able to buy your own desalination plant and have your tank water home delivered!! :thumb

Not a silly idea at all!!
:wave1

Old Dave

[Barrie]

What about this.
Put your discharge water outside into some kind of water holding race. Fill the race with rock and aquatic plants, maybe bullrushes. Pump the water gently from one end of the race to the other so that it has to pass through the plants root system many times over. Don't know if the plants would take out all the DOC's - just a thought
Barrie

[ILLUSN]

plants will only add to the DOC's

its fine to use in a garden pond, my koi and goldfish love the discus waste water.

[Barrie]

plants will only add to the DOC's

its fine to use in a garden pond, my koi and goldfish love the discus waste water.

Not sure I understand this. The article referred to plants in tanks being able to use some of the organics.

[ILLUSN]

plants use some but like all living organisums generate waste in the form of dead tissue (mainly from their roots in the water) the only way to over come this is by large volumes of flow, if you add enough water the waste being added is neglegable compared to whats removed. in a closed syetem theres no where for these componds to go where as in an open system like a river these are flushed clean.

[mistakes r crucial]

Live on a property with a good sized dam is one answer and it has to have the right reeds. Pump it up in to a 5000-10000 litre holding tank, filter it through carbon etc, pump it through your fishroom and back in to the dam. Easy huh! Donations for the $900,000 property and 50 grand system are being taken now.
Cheers
MAC

[Greggy]

A simple de-nitrator might be a long length of clear plastic PVC tubing, say 25mm ID coiled around and around 3 or 4 cheap 40Watt 4' fluro light tubes that run 24/7. Outlet water would pass through an active carbon 'reactor chamber' which would remove many dissolved organic compounds as well as unwanted elements.

Assuming the flow rate was setup correctly, the water coming out of the 'algae farm' would surely have less NO3 and other elements than what went in!

:lol:

Regards,

Greggy

[Robdog]

Move to Nth QLD and just leave the taps running. No water restrictions up here. 8-)

Millions of years of weather reports say it'll rain at the end of November so no need to hang on to it. :wink: Good summer weather for inducing spawns too.