Help! Salinity drop
 

Hi,
The tubing came out of my float valve today and dropped my 90G's salinity to 22 ppm.

I have already lost a couple snails, 2 cleaner shrimp, and two peppermint shrimp. I have 2x BTA's( Shrunken) 2x Mini Maxi( Shrunken) and a carpet( Mouth gaping atm), two clowns and a yellow tang in there, that I REALLY dont want to die.

What is the best method of increasing the Salinity without stressing the fish and surviving inverts too much????

Sorry, what's that converted into specific gravity? What's your temperature at?

that's 1.017sg at 77 degrees

i doubt your fish are gonna mind the lower salinity in fact they would probably prefer it, your inverts not so much.

just add some salt to your top off water or do a water change with a higher salinity then you pull out.

How fast is safe to pull it up though? I don't want to stress the inverts further..

well your not gonna drop a full bucket of salt in there right? just a cup or two

your not that low , i keep my tank at 1.022 consitently.

i would put a cup in and see what it does if it doesnt do much then do another etc.

your remaining fish and inverts wont mind a small spike in salinity its not like going from hypo, your just a little low.

It will take 18.5 cups of salt to bring the tank up to 1.026 or 35ppt. How long should I spread that over? 2 hours, 3hrs, 6 hours, 5 days...

well 2hrs im sure is a bad idea , 3 hrs is a bad idea , 4 hrs is a bad idea , 5 hrs is a bad idea etc.

how often do you top off your tank once a day once every two days......never?


play it smart and slow , theres no need to dump 18.5 cups into your tank at once do it over a few days and youll be fine:lol:

good luck buddy your thinking in to this to much just raise it slowly like i said a cup or two in your top off water:)

It should not take 18.5 cups. Your calculations must be wrong.

1/2 cup per gallon gives approx 1.025.

Maybe I'm wrong but that seems way far off.

I'm going by http://www.hamzasreef.com/Contents/C...Calculator.php with 90 gallons water volume

Don't forget those figures are for making saltwater from regular water. You are adding to your existing water so it would be far less salt needed.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't the "current salinity" field compensate for that?

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You would think so. To be honest I've never used that calculator but when I entered my numbers for my tank and target salinity it calculated that I needed 22 pounds of salt required. Way too much. Maybe try another calculator? Just seems off to need that much salt.

why don't u just use a refractometer or a salinity tester? This seems like its becoming way more complicated than it needs to be. Add a cup…..wait….test…if to low still add a cup…..wait…..test. So on and so on until you reach your level. Bringing it up from .017 to .023 is not that big of a deal.

+1. I may play a little fast and loose with my salinity, but sometimes if I haven't done a water change in a while and I've been really wet skimming, my salinity can drop to 1.023. My solution: dump an entire cup of salt directly in to the largest chamber of my sump, let it dissolve, test salinity, and if it's not where I want it, dump in a cup more.

Keep in mind that the total volume is 375 gallons so in a smaller volume of water I'd put in a smaller initial amount of salt, but if you add it to your sump far-ish from your return pump, I doubt you'll have problems.

That happened to me as my float stuck for my auto top off and flooded my tank over the top. The salinity was in the same range as you. I just did a couple water changes of hypo salinity water and she was good to go. None of my corals or inverts were affected. I did the water changes maybe 2 hours apart from eachother (because I couldn't make the water fast enough..lol).

Simple answer.

So your salinity is alittle low1.017 to raise it up to 1.024 I would add half a cup of salt to 1liter of your tank water and mix it up then use an air line hose and let it siphon in. Should take 2 min, or just dump in a cup of the premixed saltwater every 5 mins.

I like this idea, snails are actualy quite resiliant as they will pull inside the shell and aclimatize themselves most of the time. I would do like sugested maybe I would go a little harder 1 cup of salt desolved in a L of your water and add it over 10 min. wait a hour and see how much it changed then you know how much you have to add, leep adding every hour till it is normal.

if you want to be more cautious then go with the recomended 1/2 cup of salt.

I know on my system (120 gal of water) i have brought it up with 3 cups of salt an hour mixed into the sump with no issues.

Steve