I don't see why you couldn't put used salt water through a distiller
and reclaim almost all of it. I have not done this myself, but it
ought to work fine. You can get small countertop distillers from
Amazon for US$99 - US$200 that do a gallon at a time in four or five
hours. The question is whether it is worth the effort you'd put into
running a gallon at a time through the thing plus the cost of
electricity to run the thing. You'd probably want to clean the salt
and minerals left behind out between every gallon, too.

I have a countertop distiller that I salvaged from a chemistry lab, a
Kenmore something or other. It works great! I put a gallon of tap
water in with a pH of around 9.5 and I get perfect pH 7.0 water out,
and the inside gets coated in flaky red metal oxides that I have to
rinse out every so often. It eats about 300 watts, so for me it ends
up costing about 20 cents per gallon. I used to use distilled water
from this machine exclusively for my 25 gallon reef tank, but when I
got my 100 gallon tank it became unreasonable to try to make enough
water with the thing and I invested in an RO filter.

I'm curious now and maybe I'll go ahead and take some of the water from
my next change and put it through the distiller and see what I get.

Cheers,
Blake


Ben wrote:
G'day all,


I've been offered just about everything needed to start up a marine
tank.

Problem is, we have severe water restrictions here, and I like to
reuse the water I take from my tropical tank during weekly water
changes, and put it on my lemon tree.... the tree loves it.

Is there anything I could do with water change water from a marine
setup... or is it a case of tip it down the sink.

Cheers,


Ben.