[carolinaboyz75]

Am I able to redirect the water supply line of the Mistking system directly into my tank instead of the bucket assuming the water is clear of debries? In other words pull water directly from the water resevour inside my tank and have it remist from there?

 

[Ed]

Isolation and characterization of Legionella spp. and Pseudomonas spp. from greenhouse misting systems - Zietz - 2006 - Journal of Applied Microbiology - Wiley Online Library


http://www.internationalpbi.it/docs...Health-Douwes2003AnnoccupHygeine47187-200.pdf

Keep in mind that you are going to be pulling a lot of bacteria from the water source and aerosolizing them.

Ed

 

[carolinaboyz75]

Do you think that would be an issue if I were to keep the water filtered? Again please keep in mine I am fairly new and not familiar with alot of the technical issues of maintaining a tank.

 

[Ed]

The dissolved nutrients are still going to be in the line even if you filter it. People have done it, but if you are going to do it, you should be aware that you may not want to be breathing the mist and take steps to contain it.

Ed

 

[Zoomie]

You're essentially describing a closed system. The risks far outweigh any potential rewards.

You're essentially describing a closed system with no means to effectively deal with waste. Scientists have tried for years to develop closed systems. The biological load would have to be extremely light to come close to pulling it off. Ed could break out his abacus for us and calculate the amount of space required to minimize the risk of frog health problems. I suspect that it would be insane.

What you're descibing is not too dissimilar to running reef tanks. I spent thousands running filters, UV, and biological filters designed specifically to pull waste from water. In the end, reefers still must do water changes.

I suspect that waste loads for frog tanks are extremely heavy. We minimize the possibility of the frogs developing health issues by running flush type sytems.

Recirculating water for misting would be akin to taking showers daily with gray water.

I have no science or research to back this up. Pure speculation on my part.

 

[Ed]

Actually there are significant differences between reefs and terraria provided that the substrate is not allowed to be come saturated. The ability of soil to deal with waste products is actually magnitudes above that of any aquatic system (or filter). There is a fair bit of literature on this but digging out free access copies is going to be a pain.
The whole issue is totally dependent on whether or not the substrate is allowed to be well drained or not, a substrate that is waterlogged or saturated goes anaerobic very quickly and does not efficiently deal with waste products. Often those who use the tank as a sump do not raise the falsebottom up high enough to prevent saturation of the substrate and the subsequent issues that it provides.

If you have a copy of it, there is a small but relevent discussion on this in Ecology of the Planted Aquarium (Echinodorus Press).

Ed

 

[carolinaboyz75]

Without a doubt your answers were very precise and with the additional reading I believe I came to the conclusion that I most definitely will not be attempting to run a closed environment. I never took into consideration the bacteria or the other issues you all have mentioned. Thank you so much for your time in explaining all this with such detail.