EPA Reefs Reefers

[obtusewit]

Just kidding but ....WHAT IF???!!!

I look at my reef everyday with utter amazement. When I started this 'past time" in 1974, it was all pretty easy... you had your choice of one salt, the absolutely necessary "trace elements", and Tetra Marin. You tried to keep it all alive and above all, sterile!

When I look at my reef, as well as others, the incredible diversity of life we are able to keep and propogate rivals the development of the PC.

BUT

I walk around to the other side of the wall and see the sump, the brown goo of skimmate, the shelves above the sump full of all the necessities of reefdom. Salt mix, strontium, magnesium, iodine, buffers, calciums, and all the rest. And these are not pure elemental goodies either, they are compounds, many of which are toxic. Natural salt water has long been a problem in the water and sewage treatment biz and no one on the coast is watering their lawns with salt water, and most reefers only try once to get away with tossing a little saltwater on the grass.

I have noticed in several posts comments regarding dumping saltwater "down the drain", or "down the street", or even in some cases "on the ground". We have 1093 Maast'ers registered, rounding off at 1000, 80% active, doing a 10% water change once a month on an average 50 gallon, thats 5,000 gallons of toxic waste hitting the streets every month, 60,000 gallons a year, and that is only San Antonio.

I apologize for the length of this diatribe, but if we need to start thinking about every ecological impact this hobby imposes. Freon used to be leaked into the atmosphere by the AC service techs and sold to anyone with a buck who could find their way into Walmart, and look what happened to that product. There is already a well known coral crisis worldwide. It is not going to take much longer for the eye of scrutiny to fall on the end user, a great place to collect fees, and legislate regulations!. I don't know about the rest of reefdom but I really don't want to need permits for the chemicals, pay fees for their use, send my water changes to a hazardous waste collector, not to mention the paperwork and red tape.

I don't have the answer, but I will pose the question. Whatcha gonna do 'bout dat?

[Reef69]

well, since I cant do anything, and i dont need a yard, ill keep dumping the water in the yard???..LOL

[jaded]

just to put in perspective... most toilets use ~3 gpf... lets just call it 2 for the low flows that we all hate and have to flush twice because you can't get your nether regions clean in one flush without a plunger (but that a thread for another day)

1+ million in SA alone (not including aliens and transients)
3 flushes a day

thats roughly 2.2 billion gallons going right down the drain... with what can only be called an extremely high consentration of ammonia or ammonia causing contents, Im not up on my chemical compounds of human waste but I figure it's pretty nasty.

I really wouldnt worry about the regulation and taxation of activated carbon anytime soon

IMHO

[GaryP]

Actually there is nothing toxic, as defined by the EPA in saltwater. The problem with disposing of salt water is the impact on salinity. If you consider the degree to which is diluted by other waters it no longer has a negative impact. The main problem that you see if putting it into a small treatment system like a septic tank where the salinity shock kills the bug culture, or a large percentage of it.

That's not to say that we don't have a lot of hazardous stuff that we dispose of. For example, if we weren't exempted as household users our light bulbs would be considered hazardous waste and would have to be recycled as required by federal and state regulatory law. Just for your info, LFS are not exempt from this law since they are commercial users. Flourescent and MH bulbs contain mercury and other heavy metals.

There is a lot of hazardous stuff in those test kits you throw away as well. It is exempted as a household waste as well. That's not to say that you shouldn't dispose of it at your local household hazardous waste collection facility.

[jaded]

sometimes to much info is a bad thing

[Brett Wilson]

Thinking about how many people there are in a city, and that some households use thousand of gallons of regular water per month alone, that's a lot of dillution. I wonder if they can even detect the salt we dump down the drain. heck, it's no where near as bad as soapy water from your dishwasher, sink, washing machine, washing your car, etc...

[GaryP]

I really wouldnt worry about the regulation and taxation of activated carbon anytime soonIMHO

Activated carbon is exempted from haz waste regs as well, if its recycled. I used to do this in chemical plants. Carbon is classified as a "pollution control device". We used about 40,000 lb. of carbon every couple of months. I had to make the rounds of a few LFS to buy that much! :)

[Brett Wilson]

lol gary beat me while I was typing my response.

[GaryP]

Waste water has a fairly high salinity anyway because of the salts we produce in urine. Ever wonder why they can stock redfish in Lake Calaveras and Braunig? Where do you think that water comes from?

[GaryP]

lol gary beat me while I was typing my response.

About what? Bulbs?

[jaded]

only on this forum do I find it totally normal to read a thread that has me wondering what the specific gravity of human urine is

I LOVE THIS PLACE!!!

[GaryP]

Normal values are between 1.002 to 1.028. Normal value ranges may vary slightly among different laboratories.

Now you know. You heard it here first.

[Brett Wilson]

About what? Bulbs?

No, about dillution....

[GaryP]

Did you know that only 1% of municipal water usage is for drinking? The rest is used for flushing, washing, and landscape.

[NaCl_H2O]

Normal values are between 1.002 to 1.028. Normal value ranges may vary slightly among different laboratories.

Now you know. You heard it here first.

Did you use a Salifert kit, and how many samples, and from how many sources, did you test? Just trying to determine if you used a representative population sample for your statistical study ;)

Besides - let's total up the amount of lawn fertilizer and weed killer being washed down the storm drains this time of year ... now that is toxic waste!

[GaryP]

Actually they use refractometers in medical labs.

[Instar]

Actually the refractometer is only a backup when there are interferences (caused by medications or disease) to running a chemical specific gravity. In medical facilities, most specific gravities are measured by a chemically impregnated color pad on a dipstick and they are highly accurate.

[GaryP]

Thank you for the correction. I was trying to cover in your absence. :)

[RobertG]

OK, So I drain it down the street. What percent am I? LOL !

[Richard]

We used about 40,000 lb. of carbon every couple of months. I had to make the rounds of a few LFS to buy that much! :)

I just want to know if you can get that job back. If so I'll be happy to keep stocked up on Black Diamond for ya ;) .

[alton]

The chemical fertilizer you add to your lawns is alot worse than saltwater. I dump my saltwater right out my front door on my St. Augustine grass. I don't have any dead spots and to most peoples amazement I don't fertilize my grass. And if it wasn't for Aquarist, the reefs in the world would probably be gone already. Although we think Reef fish and Corals are pretty you can't eat them! People have to eat. Fertilizers and Erosion are killing the Reefs. Farming the Reefs to help support small countries will do more to save the worlds Reefs, more than anything else. (Man I am starting to sound like Gary I better stop)

[seamonkey2]

everything now a days is killing all of us, from the food we eat to s... we take LOL, so............. live happy, make friends and love your family, we all will die one day.

seamonkey

[GaryP]

We used about 40,000 lb. of carbon every couple of months. I had to make the rounds of a few LFS to buy that much! :)

I just want to know if you can get that job back. If so I'll be happy to keep stocked up on Black Diamond for ya ;) .

Actually I contracted it out a company that recyled the carbon. We used 40 cubic yard containers of carbon to hook up to our air vent system so that in case of an emergency shutdown benzene would be scrubbed from the exhaust gas. Regulations required that there be a back up system so we actually had two of these 40 yard containers hooked up in series so that if there was a break through of the first one, the second one would catch it. I also had some "smaller" 1000 and 2000 lb. containers we used to vent equipment for maintenance work. All of this carbon was recycled. When it was spent, it was sent to a plant in Arizona where they baked it and cooked off the organics, similar to the way people reuse carbon by baking it in an oven. It was basically the same pellatized carbon that we use in aquariums and was made from coconut shell except its pore size was better suited for vapor phase instead of the larger pore size we use for water phase. I paid around a $1/lb. for it but that included transportation, labor and the recycling cost. It was all done on a turn key basis. That was a lot cheaper than the fine we would have gotten if we had an accidental release of benzene. Anything more than 10 lb. of benzene release was considered a reportable event. If we had an emergency shutdown that amount would be released in 8 minutes. We had drills with guys flying through the plant on bicycles to get to the carbon units in time to get the valves opened within 8 minutes to prevent a reportable release of benzene.

[gjuarez]

So if I take my urine sample and use a hydrometer I can measure my sallinty. Will that affect my body's ph? Did you know that if your body's ph is alkaline you can't get cancer.

[mathias]

i read on a nother forum that in europe mostly germany they where trying to ban water changes for saltwater tanks if not ban regulate.....

[GaryP]

i read on a nother forum that in europe mostly germany they where trying to ban water changes for saltwater tanks if not ban regulate.....

That's silly.... Especially if you calculate the percentage of total waste water that water changes account for in terms of the total amount of waste water produced. Chemically its not much different from urine.

[Henry]

I thought toliets were 1gpf. I guess we will have to start recycling our water.

[GaryP]

The new ones are 2.5 gpf. Urinals are 1 gpf. The old toilets were 5 gpf.

[Reef69]

i read on a nother forum that in europe mostly germany they where trying to ban water changes for saltwater tanks if not ban regulate.....

Those silly germans..LOL