High salinity

[amaxwell]

Hi, I have a fish live rock tank and I am new to salt water tanks , but I had brother watching my house for a few weeks and he topped off the tank with salt water not knowing. My sg was 1.04. What can I do to lower this! None of my fish have died yet thank goodness.

 

[Rmckoy]

The only thing you can do is pump some water out and replace with fresh water .
What size tank is it ?

 

[amaxwell]

75 gallon

 

[Rmckoy]

Nice size
Have you tried to do a pwc

 

[AquaRick]

+1 do PWCs with fresh RO water. Do it slowly over the course of a few days.

 

[czwicky]

If you litterally mean 1.040 Salinity then I would immediately change 40-50% of your water and hope for the best. Hypersalinity is not good

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[Mebbid]

If you litterally mean 1.040 Salinity then I would immediately change 40-50% of your water and hope for the best. Hypersalinity is not good

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I would absolutely suggest against this. You don't want to shock your live stock with a salinity change. Anything like this needs to be done slowly rather than all at once. It would be best if you could change out 1 gallon of water at a time with fresh water hourly until the salinity is back in check.

 

[Hondatek]

You can take the salinity down as quick as you please. No harmful effects come from lowering salinity quickly. When raising salinity you want to be careful . More than .001-.002 can dehydrate the fish .

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[Rmckoy]

The same as all parameters .
Most animals stress out easily with slight shifts .
I would lower it gradually just to be safe .
Again it's your tank , your stock this is how I would if it happened to me

 

[Hondatek]

I agree . Do it the way you feel comfortable doing it . I was just merely shedding some light on what really is an issue with salinity change . Going higher you need to go slow and that going lower quick will not harm the fish.

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[Rmckoy]

I believe everything with saltwater has to be done slowly ,
Both salt up and down , adding live stock , adding rocks , adding sand ... Even cycling takes time and patients

 

[Mebbid]

You can take the salinity down as quick as you please. No harmful effects come from lowering salinity quickly. When raising salinity you want to be careful . More than .001-.002 can dehydrate the fish .

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But this is an entire tank. Microfauna, inverts, fish, and everything else. Are you positive that none of this will hurt anything in the tank? If it starts killing that stuff off with a major shift in salinity then that's going to trigger an ammonia spike.

 

[Hondatek]

Well do you think the microfauna , inverts and everything else aren't either suffering or dying now with the excess amount of pressure they are dealing with ? It is not like the op is going to take it below normal salinity which then could effect the inverts . And to answer your question yes I am sure nothing will happen provided the water is correctly changed IE temp matched and all that jazz.

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[amaxwell]

We just did about a 20 percent change with store bought salt water. I checked the parameters prior but it didn't lower it much. Should I do fresh water over a few days?

 

[amaxwell]

Thanks for all the help... We just did a 5 gallon swap for salt water for freshwater and it had a .005 drop to 1.035. We're going to just to 5 gallons a day and hopefully the fish will all make it! Thanks again