And So it Begins.........

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Shultz

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Jun 28, 2004
Messages
272
Location
Suffolk, UK
Firstly a big thankyou to all that have helped me with my (silly?) questions up until now :D

Having setup/ levelled the tank lastnight the tap water purifier & salt arrived today, so I've started to fill the tank tonight & got the heater running, once full & upto temp tomorrow I'll add the salt, also got the power heads adding air atm.

Will give it a couple of days before ordering/adding the LR, should I go out & buy the shrimp/pawns before then & add them even though there's nothing in the tank so it starts to rot, or should I wait until the day I get the LR?

Also should I leave the shrimp/prawns in the tank until they are completely gone or until the Am, Nitrates, Nitrites are zero & then remove whats left?

Cheers Shelton.
 
Where are you getting your LR from? If it is uncured, the dieoff from the rock should be enough to cycle the tank.

What size is the tank, and what filtration do you have?
 
LR is coming from STM here in the UK & it will be fully cured already, Tank size is 32gal UK or 39 US...

Got 2 x MaxiJet 900 PH's & I have a Prizm deluxe skimmer coming hopefully tomorrow or the next day latest

Cheers Shelton.
 
OK.....

Just something else, could just be me being over sensitive but the purified water in the tank smells a bit like stagnant pond water?

Is this because there's nothing in it atm? I started adding the salt this morning but that hasn't made a diference to it, also I've had the 2 PH's pumping airbubbles through as well?

Should I test the water's PH level, or would that have nothing to do with it?

Cheers Shelton.
 
It smells funky because the shrimp/prawns are rotting.
Depending on how cured (or un-cured) your LR is, it could get significantly nastier smelling.
 
malkore said:
It smells funky because the shrimp/prawns are rotting.
Depending on how cured (or un-cured) your LR is, it could get significantly nastier smelling.

But thats the trouble.... there is NOTHING in the tank apart from the salt water, heater unit & 2xPH's atm???

Cheers Shelton.
 
I'm guessing the DI resin is exhausted. Non rechargeable DI resin units are what they call mixed bed resins. They have an anion (negative) resin and a cation (positive) resin. The basic idea is that the resin exchanges an OH- ion for any negative ion that goes through such as Cl-, F- and a H+ for any positive ion such as Ca2+, Na+, etc. If you run the water through one resin type first, it becomes acidic or alkaline depending on which resin it goes through first. It then runs through the other and becomes neutral as the remaining counter ions also get replaced.

The drawback to that is as the PH increases or decreases, the ion exchange efficiency drops as it becomes more and more difficult to further increase or decrease the PH. The advantage of separate resins is they can be recharged.

Mixed bed resins can purify water to a much higher degree as the PH remains neutral since the H+ and OH- and created at the same time. But what is used to recharge one, discharges the other and they are therefore a one shot deal.

And since the H+ ions are held in place on the resin by an amine functionnal group, as that resin runs out, it starts giving off amines that smell fishy. The cation resin almost always runs out first.

We use huge ion exchange units at work and that smell is a dead giveaway.

Robert
 
Yeap, you got it, process of elimination this afternoon it seems this unit is faulty! bit of a bugger really so its back to square whilst I await a replacement & clean the tank with fresh water :(

Cheers Shelton.
 
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