Is there a use for waterchange water?

[piranhaking]

My great aunt has a problem with hard water. Know what they do to treat it? it runs though a large container of salt. That is where the soft water is salty comment most likely came from. Im not sure one way or the other, but i know her water tastes nasty :P

[cinnamongirl]

Originally posted by coralights
when you do the first water change after setting up this tank ... put the waste water into it ....... and the second time you do a water change ... use the water in this tank to replacie what you removeand put the "new" old water into the live rock tank ..... suffice it to say that keeping the exchange water tank healthy is very important (but easy) even to the extent of adding supplements ...

Call me an airhead, but I don't think I understand... Do you mean instead of throwing any waste water away, you just switch it back and forth between the two tanks? Do you never put freshly made saltwater in your display tank?

[Humuhumunuku]

im not sure how well this would work, but what if you put it in a large container, no live rock, perhaps plants (make it kind of like a refugium), but nothing else. Then hook up a protien skimmer and/or other filtration system and clean the water up. Kind of like the posts with the live rock water switching, but without trying to make a second tank.

[OrangeKoi]

My sons science fair project involved watering with saltwater on one set of bean seeds. The poor seeds, though they had thick stems couldn't find "up". Don't put it on beans.

[revance]

Originally posted by piranhaking
My great aunt has a problem with hard water. Know what they do to treat it? it runs though a large container of salt. That is where the soft water is salty comment most likely came from. Im not sure one way or the other, but i know her water tastes nasty :P

Water softeners don't run water through salt. They run water through an ion exchange resin. It uses the salt to make a salt brine, which is used to recharge the ion exchange resin. Granted it does add sodium molecules to the water in the exchange, but it is a huge misconception that adding salt to water softens it. If that were true, our tanks would have very soft water