What you do with the water after you have done with water change?

[cdckjn]

I have an idea. But I am not sure if this idea is workable so I am bouncing it off you guys.

If you have a pico tank - let's say a 1ft tank (main tank). You have a hang-on filter and lights, some live rocks, 2 or three small fishes, 1 shrimp perhaps.

You do a 20% water change weekly.

There will be a pail of water where you have pre-prepare a newly mixed water with salt where you perform the 20% top up from. (in some practical terms, you need 2 pails, one where you pre-prepare the NEW 20% water and another pail EMPTY for you to take 20% from the main tank and to pour away.)

After the 20% water change is done,what do you do with that CHANGED water? Pour it down the toilet? Right?

In a way my question is that this 20% water change weekly - must it be NEW water or can it be AGED water? Because I believe that 20% water change with aged water would be better. Of course in the 2ft tank, we don't need much maintenance other than it is a place for us to mix new salt mixture in.

My Soluion is we can have a some sort of refugium, where we have another 2 ft tank, where the 20% water change gets poured into this 2ft tank and the 2 ft tank can hold "aged" water? in a given month, perhaps the odd weeks, we will throw the 20% water change away. in the even weeks we can poured the 20% water change in the refugium and take tha water from the refugium to the main tank. in this way, we save on the salt.

I do know that one reason why we have a pico tank is that we don't have space for a sump or an extra 2ft tank. but I guess if we have space for 2 pails, why not make the 2 pails work for us?

any suggestions or other ideas?

[Gouldian]

I believe Wayne Shang used to do something similar. If I remember correctly, he uses the used water from his reef tank for the fowlr or vis-versa.

Source: http://www.underseadiscovery.net/home.htm

[gavinx]

sorry for hi-jacking. if mr. wayne have do this, so we might able to use the 'changed' water for the QT wc usage? i hav 2ft cube tank, plan to set up a 1.5ft QT in future. if this work, i think can save up alot of salt.

[Gouldian]

Hi bro, sorry for the late reply. Using water from main tank for QT in practical sense works as long as there isn't a disease outbreak in your main tank.

Was reading Advanced Marine Aquarium Techniques: Guide to Successful Professional Marine Aquarium Systems yesterday and in it, the author shared another way of saving by doing Batch Processing used aquarium water to be re-used later. This technique require another container with DSB and also Ozone to work - I guess it is more suitable for Public Aquarium or hobbyist with luxury of space at home.

[cdckjn]

My idea is that if you are into pico or nano tank in the first place, the MAIN reason is that you don't want a larger tank. So my point is that if you have a 1ft cube and perhaps a spare 2ft tank somewhere that we can use the 1ft cube as a main display and the 2ft tank as a refugium-######-storage for water change - main purpose is to save water and salt. But together with the DSB and Ozone I guess that this will be workable. This this way, the main tank can have water change weekly 20%. The refugum tank once a month with water change 20%. This will cut down on salt usage.