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Need help bringing my salinity back up.
- Thread starter raider77
- Start date
I wouldn't rush it. I would top off with 1.030 water for a few days should bring you back up depending on how much top off. Otherwise I'd change out 5g a day with 1.030 until it was back to running level. I wouldn't try and do it in a day.
Good luck. The sticks are the least likely to like the change. Everything else should be fine.
Good luck. The sticks are the least likely to like the change. Everything else should be fine.
Do you know for a fact your salinity monitor/hydrometer is dead accurate?
If not it's quite possible that it reads low and you are well under 1.020 which isn't good. This is to low IMHO even for a couple of days in our tanks. In nature some of the corals in lagoons experience high and low salinities but from being in stable tanks they loose some of the ability to cope with this much of a specific gravity change. Also in out tanks when the SG is low so is our calcium, our buffers and it can play havoc with pH and ORP.
I'd worry more about inverts then corals over the short course as they will have a harder time with the water change and many may die.
If it were me, I'd pull out a couple of gallons of tank water and mix in a couple cups of salt real well and pour it back into the sump slowly. I'd do this until I got the specific gravity up to 1.022-1.023 (keeping an eye on pH to make sure it doesn't jump more the 0.20) then give it a couple of hours and do it again. Once you back to around 1.024 you're in low-end SG levels of some reefs. I wouldn't worry to much and just top off with salt water until you are back to normal or you could do the salt mix again, your choice.
Alternately after getting back to 1.022-1.023 do a Ca, Alk & pH check. If they are reasonable then you could just do the top-off routine until you get back to normal.
Carlo
If not it's quite possible that it reads low and you are well under 1.020 which isn't good. This is to low IMHO even for a couple of days in our tanks. In nature some of the corals in lagoons experience high and low salinities but from being in stable tanks they loose some of the ability to cope with this much of a specific gravity change. Also in out tanks when the SG is low so is our calcium, our buffers and it can play havoc with pH and ORP.
I'd worry more about inverts then corals over the short course as they will have a harder time with the water change and many may die.
If it were me, I'd pull out a couple of gallons of tank water and mix in a couple cups of salt real well and pour it back into the sump slowly. I'd do this until I got the specific gravity up to 1.022-1.023 (keeping an eye on pH to make sure it doesn't jump more the 0.20) then give it a couple of hours and do it again. Once you back to around 1.024 you're in low-end SG levels of some reefs. I wouldn't worry to much and just top off with salt water until you are back to normal or you could do the salt mix again, your choice.
Alternately after getting back to 1.022-1.023 do a Ca, Alk & pH check. If they are reasonable then you could just do the top-off routine until you get back to normal.
Carlo
Only bad things happen quickly in reefing.
You've shocked the system once, you don't want to do it twice.
Definitely start addressing it today, but I'd go with Phyl's approach. Unless things are starting to die off already, I would go with daily water changes mixed at 1.030 or so.
What is your water volume? How long ago did you do the change? Are you seeing any signs of stress now?
You've shocked the system once, you don't want to do it twice.
Definitely start addressing it today, but I'd go with Phyl's approach. Unless things are starting to die off already, I would go with daily water changes mixed at 1.030 or so.
What is your water volume? How long ago did you do the change? Are you seeing any signs of stress now?
I did this on Monday and didn't notice it until yesterday when I went to mix up some saltwater. I went and tested the tank as soon as I realized want I had done. Nothing seems bothered yet the Stixs still have PE and my softies are out and about. As far as the inverts they all seem to be fine also. I checked with a refractometer and hydrometer and they both read 1.020.
I have 120 gallon with 125lbs of live rock and 37 gallon sump/fuge. I'm not to sure of the water volume or how to go about figuring it out. I do plan on doing 5 gallon water changes until it's back where I usually run it.
I have 120 gallon with 125lbs of live rock and 37 gallon sump/fuge. I'm not to sure of the water volume or how to go about figuring it out. I do plan on doing 5 gallon water changes until it's back where I usually run it.
There are several things you could do, however, in my opinion the best thing to do would be to make up some water with a very high salinity and drip it into you system in the chamber where the return pump will immediately displace the water. I would use one gallon of water with 4 to 5 times the proper amount of salt, a crystal sea mug should suffice.
Don't change water, there is absolutely no need for it. Just start slowly adding the salt. Just mix some small amount of water (doesn't really matter if it is fresh or from tank) with some amount of salt. Calculate how much salt you need (basically what you intended to add to 25 g) split it in how many days you want to fix it and in how many additions you want to do per day. Lets say a cup of salt in a few cups of water. Just make sure you add less water then you loose through evaporation, if adding fresh water.raider77 said:
And the simplest way to do it is just to add a few spoons of salt every few hours to your sump.
mladencovic said:
The simplest ain't always the best, and I absolutely disagree with this approach. Don't have the details, but the chemists will tell you that there are reactions that occur when salt is first mixed that need to stabilize. Any time you mix new salt water it is best to aerate it for 24 hours and bring it up to tank temperature before using.
Also, extremely high salinity is bad and can shock and burn livestock. That's why Phyl suggested a 1.030 mix. When you get above that things can get nasty.
If you want to conserve water after the first water change, use the water you remove and mix salt in to bring it up to 1.030 and then heat and aerate until the next day.
Since this stuff happened Monday and everything still looks good, I would take the slow approach.
Also, given that your water volume is over 100 gallons, I would be comfortable changing as much as 10 gallons at a time.
blange3 said:
That is why I have said small amounts, in the sump. The concentration of such addition will quickly disipate in a significantly bigger volume of your sump and should not reach your tank in any dangerous levels.
As for chemical reactions, they stabilize very quickly, specially if you add smaller amounts of salt. You do not aerate salty water for 24h, but you do aerate RO/DO water to bring the CO2 levels up and stabilize the concentration of carbonic acid and your pH (or tap water to evaporate chlorine and also stabilize CO2 levels), before you add salts. In case of supersaturated water or salt "sludge", that does not matter, because you are using small amounts of water.
Again, let me make myself clear, we do agree on that you do it slowly, the only difference is that I am saying that you do not need to mess with large amounts of water and you can just add small superasuturated amounts.
You guys are making this out to be far more technical then it is. There is almost nothing in your tanks that will have a problem going from 1.020 to 1.025/6 in a short amount of time. You won't shock ANYTHING by doing this. What you need to watch is when you're down in the 1.005 to 1.010 range and want to increase the salinity. It's a whole nother set of rules down in that area until you get back to around 1.020. This is why you need to bring the salinity up slowly after completing hypo treatment. It's not the same thing here.
You can add the salt very quickly and bring the system up almost within minutes BUT it's not the salinity you want to worry about. It's the pH and alk change that will do you harm. As long as the rate of addition keeps the pH from changing more then 0.20 within a couple of hours and alk at less then 1dKH over the same couple of hours you'll be fine.
If you add salt to already existing salt water a lot of the "danger reactions" don't exist. The water IS NOT ION HUNGRY and is already stable. The reactions people worry about with salt water are more from the lack of IONS in the water (DI stage) then the salt itself. It's just the reaction happens when you add minerals (ions) back into the water void of these ions. Again, this is not the case if you pull a gallon of water out of the tank and mix a 1/2 cup salt in with it. Let it dissolve and go clear (5 minutes or so) and pour back in.
You don't want to add a tremendous amount of salt at one time to say a gallon of water because you don't want to precipitate anything and you don't want the alk or pH of the tank to change quickly.
You can very easily add a 1/2 cup of salt in this fashion to a gallon of water every 5-10 minutes or so depending on how fast your salt dissolves and what type of change you get with pH.
Dumping a gallon of water back into the sump with say an extra 1/2 cup of salt is not going to cause a salinity spike anywhere near your corals. The sump itself (assuming 20 gallons) is not going to change that much and certainly not to anything dangerous. It's take a few minutes before the effect is even seen in the system due to circulation as a lot of new water will be entering the sump and diluting the "salt solution". By the time this water gets back into the tank it probably won't even be a "point" higher and certainly no cause for alarm as the in tank circulation is going to mix this up pretty quickly. In effect the corals will see the salinity changing rather slowly even if you add a 1/2 cup every 5 minutes.
Carlo
You can add the salt very quickly and bring the system up almost within minutes BUT it's not the salinity you want to worry about. It's the pH and alk change that will do you harm. As long as the rate of addition keeps the pH from changing more then 0.20 within a couple of hours and alk at less then 1dKH over the same couple of hours you'll be fine.
If you add salt to already existing salt water a lot of the "danger reactions" don't exist. The water IS NOT ION HUNGRY and is already stable. The reactions people worry about with salt water are more from the lack of IONS in the water (DI stage) then the salt itself. It's just the reaction happens when you add minerals (ions) back into the water void of these ions. Again, this is not the case if you pull a gallon of water out of the tank and mix a 1/2 cup salt in with it. Let it dissolve and go clear (5 minutes or so) and pour back in.
You don't want to add a tremendous amount of salt at one time to say a gallon of water because you don't want to precipitate anything and you don't want the alk or pH of the tank to change quickly.
You can very easily add a 1/2 cup of salt in this fashion to a gallon of water every 5-10 minutes or so depending on how fast your salt dissolves and what type of change you get with pH.
Dumping a gallon of water back into the sump with say an extra 1/2 cup of salt is not going to cause a salinity spike anywhere near your corals. The sump itself (assuming 20 gallons) is not going to change that much and certainly not to anything dangerous. It's take a few minutes before the effect is even seen in the system due to circulation as a lot of new water will be entering the sump and diluting the "salt solution". By the time this water gets back into the tank it probably won't even be a "point" higher and certainly no cause for alarm as the in tank circulation is going to mix this up pretty quickly. In effect the corals will see the salinity changing rather slowly even if you add a 1/2 cup every 5 minutes.
Carlo