Specific Gravity Question

[Enygma_0]

All,

I had a quick question that sounds totally dumb but, hey I am still a newb. When I am doing my weekly water changes 10% on a 29 g, am I going to need to add salt to my RO/DI water or just add it straight in? I had a spike from 1.24 to 1.26 and I think it's because I have been adding salt to my water all of the time?

I am assuming as water evaporates, salt does not, thus if I add more salt water salinity level gets higher?

 

[EL Diablo]

When you do a water change you use SW thats the same SG as your tank.

When you top off for evaporation use RO or RO/DI water.

 

[Sparky]

If you had some major evaporation BEFORE you did a water change and replaced the evaporated water along with the water change, then you may see a spike in the SG. It will depend on how much make-up water that you needed to put into the tank before the water change.

For instance if you needed five gallons of make-up water and took out ten gallons more for a water change, then you would have to put back in 15 gallons of saltwater. Since through eveaporation the salt doesn't go anywahere you in essence are adding more salt to the system.

I really shouldn't make that big of a difference but you can see if you do this on a regular basis you can raise your SG everytime you do a water change.

Whatever I remove from my tank for a water change is all I put back in. I then top-off the tank with RO/DI water. This keeps it balanced.

HTH

Mike

 

[Enygma_0]

Sparky,

Thanks for the heads up, I am sure that's what I was doing. I am going to lower it some this week by doing a partial water change with only RO/DI water to slowly lower it.