What are some helpful aquarium hacks and hints?

[Fortuna117]

For example: On a university exclusive behind the scenes tour of the largest reef aquarium, the tour guides mentioned substituting Marine salt for pool salt.


On other websites people also mention using polyester found in pillow stuffing for the filter, instead aquarium brand polyester or using play sand instead of aquarium sand.

In the interest of saving money can people reading this suggest other tips or hacks for the aquarium and post them in this thread?

 

[Fortuna117]

The above post was written on an android resulting in grammatical mistakes, which will drive me crazy if not edited.

During a university exclusive tour of the largest reef aquarium in Australia, the tour guides implied the coral aquarium was using pool salt as a substitute for Marine Salt. Alternatively, some websites also suggest using polyester pillow stuffing for the mechanical filtration and replacing aquarium sand for play sand in reference to substrate.

@People reading: Please post any other tips or hacks for the aquarium.

 

[Rob Top1]

Pickling lime instead of Kalkwasser.
Search medical pumps on eBay instead of aquarium, got a medical grade Iwaki 100 used ship to my door for $20. Also look at all categories when searching lights, have gotten halide ballasts for $5.
Build your oven...calcium reactor, protein skimmer, media reactor. Unless you need it pretty pvc works wonders.

Careful with play sand don't know what you have out there but a lot in the U.S. won't work. Also would be concerned that pool salts wouldn't be pure enough.

 

[Fortuna117]

"Also would be concerned that pool salts wouldn't be pure enough."

In Australia you can buy a brand called sunray from bunnings (hardware shop) for $8 per 25kg. This brand of pool salt is 100% evaporated sea salt and should work in theory and according to reefhq it works in practice.

"Careful with play sand don't know what you have out there but a lot in the U.S. won't work."
Never used play sand in an aquarium before and have only considered it for freshwater. Because of this you might be right in assuming play sand might not work for saltwater.