Salinity

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Zer0

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Alright well, my salinity is a tad high atm, its around 1.024 1/2 close to 1.025. Now the thing is, i thought to lower the sg you put in ro water. So i did.. but my sg level went down to 1.022, but then went back up to what it was before.. So now im confused. Should i siphon out some of the water that is currently in there? And then replace it with the ro water?
 
Thats not that high I keep mine at a constant 1.024 but if you really want to lower it then yeah you can siphon and add.
 
1.024 is not high, in fact that's lower than natural sea water which is 1.0264. There is no reason to keep the salinity lower.

Salinity varys across the oceans from 1.018 to 1.032 depending on time of year, current, temp, etc. It is more important to keep it at a constant number that you aclimate your fish and inverts to rather than hit a specific number i keep mine at 1.023 capt keeps his at 1.025 both are correct we just couldn't swap corals or fish without salinity aclimation
 
Salinity varys across the oceans from 1.018 to 1.032 depending on time of year, current, temp, etc. It is more important to keep it at a constant number that you aclimate your fish and inverts to rather than hit a specific number i keep mine at 1.023 capt keeps his at 1.025 both are correct we just couldn't swap corals or fish without salinity aclimation

Reefs and reef fish do not occur in all the oceans or latitudes though. We run our reef at 1.026. Fish only can be run lower (1.023ish), but that range is far too large for the vast majority of animals kept.
 
I agree. I would never run anything at the outer extremes. 1.026 to 1.022 is about right just pick a number in there and keep it there.
 
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Ok so i need some help here. Im pretty lost about this salinity changing junk. I just added ALOT of RO water and the salinity was fine around 1.024 for a while.. but this morning i tested it and its at 1.027.. and NO water has evaporated.. why does it keep going up? This is ridiculous.
 
Wonderful. I think im just going to siphon out some more water today and fill it back up with RO. I dont want to.. but i dont have much a choice. I've got 75lbs of LR coming in today that i want to get set up. Salinity cant be too high :/
 
If you added saltmix directly to the tank that is not good the salt in a solid form can "burn" the gills of the fish. I can't think of any other reason how the salinity would jump up that much that quickly. Even if you accidently added saltwater instead of RO water, the salinity still would not jump up that high, unless you saltwater was extremely high salinity. I keep my tank at a consistent 1.025 because it has coral. If I had fish only I would keep it at 1.022 or 1.023
 
Ok.. im completely aware of that. The salt is NOT is the solid form. I mixed everything including the sand so no salt was left sitting on it. And i only added it to the tank because there is NOTHING in the tank. Water and sand. Thats it. Lets get past that whole thing because its not a bad thing that i added it to the tank since there was nothing in there. I siphoned out about a quarter of the current water and filled the rest up with RO water. Btw, do i need to dechlor RO water? No right?
 
This is the first time you're filling the tank, right? If that's the case, adding salt to the water in the tank is OK... just don't do it once you have critters in there. But it's going to take a few days for the salinity to settle down. It's no different than mixing saltwater in a separate mixing tub - measuring the parameters of just made saltwater is kind of useless as it always takes 24 hours or so for things to settle down.

Oh... and ALWAYS add salt to water - never add water to salt. Adding water to salt causes the salt concentrations to be momentarily too high and can cause issues with elements precipitating out of the solution and not redissolving.

Since you're just mixing saltwater to put in new live rock (uncured, I'm assuming?), I wouldn't get overly concerned about the salinity. As long as you're in the 1.022 to 1.028 range, I would think you'd be OK. All you're doing is curing the rock and cycling the tank. You'll have some dieoff from the ammonia anyway, but plenty of stuff on the live rock will survive the cycle. Salinity that's a little too high will be the least of its concerns. You've got plenty of time during/after the cycle to get your salinity where you want it.
 
Thank you Kurt! Thats exactly what i wanted to hear! I guess you get that alot dont you lol. But yeah, there was nothing in the tank, i filled it up with water first, and then i added salt. I never add water to salt lol. But see the thing is, its been about 5 days to a good full week.. should there still be signs of the salinity going all haywire? Anyways, the salinity is at a 1.023 currently so i was able to drop it down a couple. Its probably going to rise back up but im not to worried now. Thanks guys.
 
Just a question from a newbie, could temp be causing the fluctuation? I know that using a hydrometer you have to take in to account the temp can affect the reading. I bought a refractometer nt long ago. When calibrated at 68 degrees it is supposed to self adjust for the current temp.
 
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