Tonight I did a 30% water change in my 125 gallon tank that has been up and running for about a week and a half because of high levels of ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. I had these levels tested at our LFS and that was their suggestion. Before the water change, the salinity level was at .022, after water change the level was just below .016. I have added a good amount of salt since the water change and have re-checked the level a few times and it barely seems to be coming up. I do have 3 fish, a starfish and some crabs. Is this sudden change in salinity going to be detrimental to them?? And how long do I have to get the salinity level back to normal before it starts effecting them???
Salinity Level
- Thread starter Marci04
- Start date
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Henry405
Aquarium Advice FINatic
Did you cycle your tank? Im more worried about the ammonia and nitrite killing your fish than SG
Well, we were told from our LFS that we could add fish 24 hours after starting up the tank as long as we used a product called Stability. We had it up and running a couple of days before we added fish. The funny thing is, all of our LFS (and we have 4) told us the same thing about adding fish that soon. They all said that it would be safe and good for the tank to add fish. I'm getting very frustrated because I don't know who to trust anymore!!!
Bettababe1011
Aquarium Advice Addict
Marci04 said:
Trust us here at AA.
I generally say, Take what your lfs says for a grain of salt until proven true.
Ask us here. Lfs's are businesses that are looking for a sale. They just want the money, usually. We don't want your money, we just want your fish and you to be happy.
Will the water change I did today increase the chances of my fish surviving? Our LFS said to bring a water sample back in 24 hour after doing the water change to re-check our levels. When we do that, we are going to buy our own testing kit. It seems the more I read, the more I learn of LFS not testing water samples properly and giving their customers false readings. I know our kit should include Nitrites, Nitrates, Ph and Ammonia. Anything else important that should be added to that list?
Bettababe1011
Aquarium Advice Addict
Uh huh. With an in fish cycle, water changes are your best friends. I can't help much, because I have a limited knowledge on saltwater. I'm just starting freshwater.
I would take advice from the more experienced saltwater people than me. If I can help at all though, I will.
I would take advice from the more experienced saltwater people than me. If I can help at all though, I will.
tjm80
Aquarium Advice Freak
I would return the fish to the LFS and do a fishless cycle. Fishless cycling is easier, faster, and cheaper. Doing daily or every other day PWC's on a tank that big will cost you a lot in salt, and it also slows down your cycle.
Henry405
Aquarium Advice FINatic
I dont know much about how to solve things since I am still a noobie at this, but posting up information about your tank would help others who are more knowledgeable.
How big is your tank? amount of live rock? dry rock? sand? filtration? what kinds of fish? how have you been adding salt, mixed or just adding it to the tank? powerheads?
I can tell you right now adding any fish to a SW tank in 24 hours isnt good unless your moving from an old SW tank to a new one.
Your ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are all high right now due to the tank cycling.
Here is a great article about it:
Cycle your salt tank
If you did get expensive fishes, I would try to return to get store credit so that you can re add them later. Tell them that the advice they gave you is clearly wrong and that if they believe that they can add fish to a brand new tank, I would like to see them try it for themselves. Adding fishes to a SW tank that hasn't completely been cycled is very disastrous due the the fishes being extremely sensitive to changes in ammonia, nitrite, etc. Some people can be lucky and add fish early in a FW tank, but that is still ill-advised since putting any fish in dangerous water is wrong.
How big is your tank? amount of live rock? dry rock? sand? filtration? what kinds of fish? how have you been adding salt, mixed or just adding it to the tank? powerheads?
I can tell you right now adding any fish to a SW tank in 24 hours isnt good unless your moving from an old SW tank to a new one.
Your ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are all high right now due to the tank cycling.
Here is a great article about it:
Cycle your salt tank
If you did get expensive fishes, I would try to return to get store credit so that you can re add them later. Tell them that the advice they gave you is clearly wrong and that if they believe that they can add fish to a brand new tank, I would like to see them try it for themselves. Adding fishes to a SW tank that hasn't completely been cycled is very disastrous due the the fishes being extremely sensitive to changes in ammonia, nitrite, etc. Some people can be lucky and add fish early in a FW tank, but that is still ill-advised since putting any fish in dangerous water is wrong.
Bettababe1011
Aquarium Advice Addict
Also, the API saltwater test kit is considered the best in most people's opinion. It's a liquid test kit, and the strips are notoriously inaccurate.
tjm80
Aquarium Advice Freak
Also - you don't ever want to add salt directly to your tank. Ever. Worst case scenario is you mix the salt and let the water clear up before you put it in, and that's only for absolute emergencies. You should get a heater and a powerhead and have your water mixing/aerating for 24 hours ideally before it goes in your tank.
We have a 125 gallon tank, one heater, two 402 power heads, 3 404 Fluval filters, 35 lbs of Argonite Sand, about 10 lbs of live rock and I would say about 60+ lbs of base rock. We have one Clown, one Clown Sweetlips, one Firefish, one Serpent Starfish and 4 crabs. Water temp is consistent at about 78 degrees. We pre-mix our salt before adding it. Also, our LFS will not allow us to return our fish.
Henry405
Aquarium Advice FINatic
Everyone is posting at once and information is being repeated so here's a list of things I, as in my opinion so it could be wrong and only take the advice at your own risk:
1. keep doing water changes, but not 30%, 10% is the recommended level for doing maintenance. Maybe one in the morning and one at night.
2. try to return the fish, this will save you some money so you can use the money to buy fish later on. Tell them that it was their fault for the poor advice that they have given you. If they believe their advise is correct, they shouldn't feel so negative about accepting the fishes back for store credit.
1. keep doing water changes, but not 30%, 10% is the recommended level for doing maintenance. Maybe one in the morning and one at night.
2. try to return the fish, this will save you some money so you can use the money to buy fish later on. Tell them that it was their fault for the poor advice that they have given you. If they believe their advise is correct, they shouldn't feel so negative about accepting the fishes back for store credit.
tjm80
Aquarium Advice Freak
You said you have 4 LFS, try the other 3. They should give you store credit. If not they wouldn't see one more red cent of mine, especially after the terrible advice.
Henry405
Aquarium Advice FINatic
Since you cant return the fish and you have a very large tank, you could quarantine the fish for now to let the tank balance out.
How did you obtain your live rock? My LFS just put mine in a bag and sold it to me, but to have the least amount of die off from a live rock, it should be transported submerged in SW. Since you only have 10 lbs of LR, I would go to the LFS store and buy 10 lbs of LR, put them into a bucket of SW and bring them home. Add fresh SW to a quarantine tank and then add the LR. Put a powerhead in it and the heater also. Then Acclimate the fish into the container. The less time the LR spends out of water, the less chances of you having ammonia develop in the container.
How did you obtain your live rock? My LFS just put mine in a bag and sold it to me, but to have the least amount of die off from a live rock, it should be transported submerged in SW. Since you only have 10 lbs of LR, I would go to the LFS store and buy 10 lbs of LR, put them into a bucket of SW and bring them home. Add fresh SW to a quarantine tank and then add the LR. Put a powerhead in it and the heater also. Then Acclimate the fish into the container. The less time the LR spends out of water, the less chances of you having ammonia develop in the container.
Kurt_Nelson
Aquarium Advice Addict
Well... by now you've probably figured out you got some really bad advice from the LFS. I really hate all those ads - "... just use a bottle of this and you can add fish in a day!!..." I honestly think these companies do more harm to the hobby than good. But that's a different post, I suppose...
You've got two things going wrong for you right now - the cycle you're going to be getting in to, and the very low salinity.
1. Salinity - You really want to be up around 1.025-1.026, regardless of whether its reef or fish only. The sudden lowering of salinity wasn't terrible - not desirable, but not terrible. Fish seem to tolerate sudden lowering of salinity better than a sudden increase. Quick lowering of salinity is a normal part of hyposalinity treatment for ich, and I've done it several times with no ill effect. As far as the lower salinity and the starfish... I'm thinking it's not going to really tolerate it like the fish will, but there's not much you can do about it. The damage is done. Just keep an eye on it and if it looks like a goner, pull it from the tank before it fouls up the water even more.
You want to slowly increase your SG up to 1.025, and with critters in there you really don't want to do it more than 0.0005 a day. So if you're at 1.016 now, then tomorrow I'd bump up to 1.0165. You get the idea. If you don't have a refractometer, you're going to need one for this. Besides, you eventually need to get one anyway.
As far as the "how" to increase the SG, instead of topping off with fresh water, top off with salt water. But on top of that, you're going to have to also change out some of the 1.016 water with a high salinity water. You could make up some salt water at 1.040 and add a little of that for daily water changes - in the right proportions to get you where you want to be.
2. Cycle - With the small amount of live rock and the large amount of fish starting off, sounds like you're going to see a cycle. You're going to see ammonia start to increase, and eventually decrease. Then your nitrites will increase and decrease. Eventually those two things will decrease to zero and your nitrates will increase. At that point, you're cycled. But during the cycle, you're going to want to do water changes to keep the ammonia levels at a somewhat tolerable level for the fish - I'd say 0.25ppm or so. You can't eliminate all the ammonia, since you need it to cycle - but you can at least keep it from spiking too high. The cycle is going to take longer this way, but at least you give your fish a fighting chance.
The other option is if you can get some fully cured live rock - say 50-60 lbs - you could add that and potentially avoid the cycle. (You're probably going to want more rock anyway.) "Fully cured" rock is going to have the bacteria population already living in it, and starting a tank with it often avoids a cycle all together. But it's spendy... expect to pay 8-10$/lb for the stuff. And often times it's questionable if the stuff being sold as "cured" is truly that.
Or the idea Henry had of getting a smaller amount of fully cured rock and starting a smaller tank is an idea.
The salinity and the cycle issues aren't impossible problems to deal with. It's just a rough start in to the hobby. Read as much stuff as you can on this forum to see how others have dealt with it, and ask questions, and you'll get through it.
You've got two things going wrong for you right now - the cycle you're going to be getting in to, and the very low salinity.
1. Salinity - You really want to be up around 1.025-1.026, regardless of whether its reef or fish only. The sudden lowering of salinity wasn't terrible - not desirable, but not terrible. Fish seem to tolerate sudden lowering of salinity better than a sudden increase. Quick lowering of salinity is a normal part of hyposalinity treatment for ich, and I've done it several times with no ill effect. As far as the lower salinity and the starfish... I'm thinking it's not going to really tolerate it like the fish will, but there's not much you can do about it. The damage is done. Just keep an eye on it and if it looks like a goner, pull it from the tank before it fouls up the water even more.
You want to slowly increase your SG up to 1.025, and with critters in there you really don't want to do it more than 0.0005 a day. So if you're at 1.016 now, then tomorrow I'd bump up to 1.0165. You get the idea. If you don't have a refractometer, you're going to need one for this. Besides, you eventually need to get one anyway.
As far as the "how" to increase the SG, instead of topping off with fresh water, top off with salt water. But on top of that, you're going to have to also change out some of the 1.016 water with a high salinity water. You could make up some salt water at 1.040 and add a little of that for daily water changes - in the right proportions to get you where you want to be.
2. Cycle - With the small amount of live rock and the large amount of fish starting off, sounds like you're going to see a cycle. You're going to see ammonia start to increase, and eventually decrease. Then your nitrites will increase and decrease. Eventually those two things will decrease to zero and your nitrates will increase. At that point, you're cycled. But during the cycle, you're going to want to do water changes to keep the ammonia levels at a somewhat tolerable level for the fish - I'd say 0.25ppm or so. You can't eliminate all the ammonia, since you need it to cycle - but you can at least keep it from spiking too high. The cycle is going to take longer this way, but at least you give your fish a fighting chance.
The other option is if you can get some fully cured live rock - say 50-60 lbs - you could add that and potentially avoid the cycle. (You're probably going to want more rock anyway.) "Fully cured" rock is going to have the bacteria population already living in it, and starting a tank with it often avoids a cycle all together. But it's spendy... expect to pay 8-10$/lb for the stuff. And often times it's questionable if the stuff being sold as "cured" is truly that.
Or the idea Henry had of getting a smaller amount of fully cured rock and starting a smaller tank is an idea.
The salinity and the cycle issues aren't impossible problems to deal with. It's just a rough start in to the hobby. Read as much stuff as you can on this forum to see how others have dealt with it, and ask questions, and you'll get through it.
Tom-tom
Aquarium Advice Activist
You should name and shame the shops....
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