water evaporation

[Dayna]

The light in our aquarium is on for about 6 hours a day... we get about an inch of water evaporation a day. i'm constantly topping the aquarium up.

what would be causing this is the lights barely on. also, is there any way to keep your aquarium looking clean on the outside.... i have about an inch of salt ontop of my canopy. no water splashes either, sometimes chunks of the salt fall into the water and the fish think its food and go and eat it.... is that bad for them???

 

[MadManMac]

Evaporation is not only good, it is necessary. Evaporation helps reduce the temperature of the tank and facilitates gas exchange. The easiest thing to do is set up an auto top off system or put a lid on the tank. The lid has some major draw backs, but is an option. One other thing you can do is to put a humidifier in the room with the tank. If the air already has more water in it, the amount of water that can evaporate into it will be less. Remember, topoff is just one of those things you have to do, albeit not everyday if the system is setup to handle it.

 

[fishfreek]

What size tank and how many gal of daily evaporation?

I have on average 1 - 1 1/2 gal of evaporation a day in my tanks. They are 75 and 80gal each in size.

 

[malkore]

so, as a new SW person, I should keep something like a small rubbermaid tub filled with aging saltwater, at the correct temp, to deal with top-offs for evaporation?

as opposed to, say, only mixing up some water on wednesday in preparation for saturday's water changing.

 

[fishfreek]

NO.

You want to topoff with FRESHWATER.

Here is a little rule of thumb for you on what type of water to add when.

If you physically removed water from the system then add the same volume of SALTwater.

If water is not physically removed (ie evaporation) then add FRESHwater.

This is because salt does not evaporate. So adding saltwater to replace evaporation will only increase the salinity over time.

 

[malkore]

ah, gotcha. don't know why I thought the salt would evaporate...I should've known better than that!

 

[fishfreek]

No problemo.

 

[MadManMac]

Do keep an eye on your salinity though, becasue even though salt does not evaporate, it does creep and over time that could lead to a low SG.

 

[Dayna]

Do keep an eye on your salinity though, becasue even though salt does not evaporate, it does creep and over time that could lead to a low SG.

ya my salinity got up too 28 8O 8O 8O