you are afraid of leaving your tank low on water? Don't take the water out until you've mixed and let the new saltwater sit. your not topping off due to evaporation with saltwater are you?

a new filter?
 

that makes sense. no i top off with fresh RO water, but i do my changes with tap water. i think i may be through most of this now. my leather coral is standing up more and my water is clear. however my 2 firefish and my jaw fish did not make it through this. my clowns are back in the tank and doing ok so far. i am still looking for any advice, you can never know everything right. and i dont want to mess up again. i am off for a boxing day sale is it worth looking into a new filter, i am not familiar with the canister filters. i have a fluval right now and i dont like it. also i noticed from running my friends coralife skimmer that it is pulling more out than my prisim. any comments?

Okay what they were trying to say was"you need to make up water in a something big, like a garbage can about 24 hours before you want to do your water change. Add a power head and a heater and let it sit for the 24 hours.That way when you do your water change the salt is dissolved completly and aereated. Adding fresh salt to your tank that looks dissolved is not always dissolved as you learned with the specs on your fish. And it burns them when it lands on them so that is not helping. Is there a reason why you use r/o for top offs but not water changes. To me that defets the purpose of adding r/o at all. The tap water will add to a phosphate problem which will not help. And i used to live in Drayton and no there water quality sucks...lol
The filter is not a bad one. Depends on what you can get there not sure haven't been there in about 6 months so am unsure about that. I would just see how things go from here and yep upgrade the skimmer if you upgrade anything.

LIsa

i was told it is the most important with top up cause you are not taking anything out. where on a water change you are taking out so you can put the tap water back in. i dont know, but i have access to the RO water easily so i think that i will do my changes with it from now on. and leave it to cure for awhile.

Whoever told you that one is just plain incorrect.

Just to be clear...
Evaporative top up - use RO water
Water change - use SW mixed using RO water.

Just don't allow tap water to ever enter the system. Plain and simple.

My $.02: I do 10% water change weekly using SW that I mix and use immediately after mixing. It's not the best procedure, but it has never caused me any problems in 3 years. In fact, due to the new SW being cold, the tank temp drops by nearly 2 degrees C each time I do it. Bad...but no dramatic effect like you are experiencing.

Are you adding prime or anything to the tap water when you put it back in?

I would agree just forgo the tap water all together. That can lead to more problems.

Lisa

i do use prime. but my husband sometimes uses way to much, what kind of effect can that have?

Hmmm i dunno if that would have an impact or not. I would maybe check out seachems site in regards to that. How are things with the tank now. The remaining fish are okay? Levels are back to normal?

Lisa

everyhting is back to normal finally. i only have 2 clowns left and my coral looks like it is going to pull through. my xania and zoos are still alive but not doing well. i will just hope for the best with them. everything even my ph and nitrate are great. this was definetly a learning experience. and i hope that it is over.