New Concept in Hyposalinity???

[yearofthenick]

Now don't everyone throw me under the bus just yet... give me a chance to explain this. It's just a thought and I've never done it, but if you're like me, you probably don't like dumping so many gallons of water during hypo treatment. I'm not saying this concept will replace everything, but might be used as a good stable way to lower salinity in your QT with a minimal loss of water. How to raise salinity and keep the water clean is still all the same.
OKAY - so here's my idea. What if you got an RO unit and hooked it up to your QT, setting it aside only for your QT... to lower salinity and return clean, pure RO water. You could get a cheap RO unit and run it really slow, connecting it to a pump in the tank. This would be an excellent and VERY stable way of lowering the salinity evenly and consistently.
You could get an RO unit REALLY cheap online... it just needs to remove the salt from the water.
I've drawn a VERY crude image of what I'm thinking of. Thoughts???

 

[aquaknight]

Thinking whatever the prefilters don't pick up, the RO membrane itself will clog very quickly from the salt particles (matter of seconds IMO). Or the size of the pump you need to get the line pressure high enough, would be massive. Something like a Mag 3600

 

[stdreb27]

Do you know HOW MUCH water you'd have to use in order to justify paying 100 dollars for a crappy ro unit?
I might pay 100 for a year of water for my whole apartment.
They do "wash" salt water, I think the Georgia aquarium does that for their reef tank, but I'm not sure how or what is involved.

 

[beth]

RO membranes aren't designed to filter salt water.
Marine hobby is just going to result in some wasted water.

 

[yearofthenick]

There's got to be something that can filter the salt out of water... I'm going to figure it out... then patent it and make millions! just kidding.

 

[keebler]

You could do it via distillation, but that's gonna be kinda pricy. I like the concept, but unfortunately it is more trouble than it is worth. You could get a timer and rig a pump up to put fresh water in and take salt water out in small portions several times a day.

 

[yearofthenick]

Or I could do an overflow with an auto top-off... put either RO or "super" saltwater in the top-off... that's another way to get the salinity down really consistently... although yes it would be tricky to dial in right.

 

[kilted reefer]

You would have more waste water with the RO unit idea than would go back into the QT. You would have to add new water anyway.

 

[al mc]

The overall goal of resource conservation is a noble one. Unfortunately, it would seem that you have to invent a 'Rube Goldberg' type apparatus to make it work.