I was wondering if I could recycle the water that I suck out when cleaning the tank if I could filter it. I have a filter system that actually came out of a pool and If I was to put some cloth or some type of filter in the housing and ran my sucktion to it would it be ok. I'm assuming yes because it would have removed all fish droppings and filtered water.

I wouldnt because the water you remove out of the tank will have elevated nitrate levels that a regular mechanical filtration can not remove.

The filter on your fish tank usually has a mechanical part to take out large lumps and a biological part where bacteria live. These bacteria convert ammonia into nitrite and then convert that into nitrate. We change water in our tanks to remove some of the nitrate. You pool filter will not remove this nitrate so you cant recycle your old tank water through it

you could recycle your aquarium water for watering your yard or plants

MeghanR wrote:


This is the best way to reuse that water. The nitrate in the water will make your plants very happy

the nitrate acts as a fertilizer

Man, you should see the plantgrowth in my front garden where i put all the weekly water from the waterchanges.
Those plants grow several meters high and reach my roof!

haha thats awsome noddy

I have actually been messing with a pool filtration system as well. Here is what I learned.

Split the intake and output pipes to allow for multiple areas of suction and feed. If you do it right you can get a current that actually prevents the buildup of debris reducing the amount of physical cleaning you have to do. I use plastic pvc piping from the hardware store for the piping system.

Don’t use cloth for any of the filters. They clog really fast and can overheat the pump. I use several layers of plain old plastic furnace filter. Has a great capture ratio and are cheap.

LOTS AND LOTS OF Carbon. I use a two step carbon filtration one is just plain old carbon and the other is ammonia removing carbon works great.

The last step to the system is a long box with lots of rock in it. I made it big so as to have the slowest flow rate through it from there the water feeds back into the tank at set locations.

Finally make sure you place your heaters near the outflow pipes you want the freshly filtered water to pass over the heaters. I find this kept the water temp more stable.