What is wrong with this idea?

[Soultwater]

Let’s just say you could build a large well reef tank with the bottom in the shape of a funnel. Inside the aquarium the bottom is supported with something like egg crate but not breakable and very strong. This being said it should be apparent that we do not have any substrate. Now what I want to do is make the end of the funnel a drain for doing water changes. What I’m thinking is the heavy materials and metals in the water will sink and be drained out with water changes. This change should greatly reduce the amount of water that will need changed for routine maintenance and over time reduce the overall cost of upkeep.

What is wrong with this idea?

 

[Anonymous]

Nothing if you can make it work. Some systems have setteling tanks that lets the water slow down and dump solids into a sloped bottom tank and drain. Does the same thing.

 

[Anonymous]

This will make the tank free of sediment, but the metallic ions and organic chemical that dissolves in the water will not settle out so it does not affect them. It will make it easier to siphon the sediment and detritus out, but you still need to do as much water change.

 

[wetworx101]

I have been building a couple tanks right now that have sloped bottoms. The tanks are 24" tall in the front, and 4" in the back. Trust me, its not easy... you have to engineer the support points just right to prevent the tank from sliding off the front of the stand. At that, once you figure out your shear stress calculations and how you will support everything, its not so bad. I wanted to go with a single slope, since I figure the rear bottom areas of a reef tank are the most useless (you often cant see much and its just where fish hide and detritus collects), and by having a slope to the front, you can still keep a strip of sand along the front. When detritus collects, you will easily see it. To cover the slope I make aragacrete plates that lie on the angled bottom to look like a rock shelf.