Asylumdown's 275 Tank build

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by wreck

ohhh man....... that is terrible.
i am using the fluval salt atm this kinda worries me a bit.

have you had any problems with it? I've never seen anything like what happened, the last bucket of this brand didn't do that, but I bought it almost a year ago. I don't know how else to describe the smell - I'm used to freshly mixed salt water having a very distinct smell, it's actually my favourite part of a water change. This batch smelled completely different. It didn't smell bad, just completely different.

I'm also used to salt being a little cloudy right after it's mixed, but this was so cloudy you couldn't see through the water change chamber of my sump, even though the doors on the other side of the cabinet were open and the light in the office was on. I let it stand for half an hour with a Koralia mixing it and it never cleared. The only thing I can think is that the salt maybe wasn't mixed very well and there was an insane precipitation reaction? One of my angriest acros looks like it has white powder all over it

Originally Posted by Aquattro

Do you have enough of that left in the bin to test alk?

You mean of the new water? No, I do water changes (including mixing of the salt) out of a special chamber in my sump, so 100% of what I make ends up in the tank. It's a brand new bucket of salt though, so I'm going to make a couple gallons now and test it.

FWIW, I tested alk and calcium immediately following the water change. The 48-ish gallon water change only raised alk in the tank by 0.15 dKH and it didn't change the calcium level. In perspective, a half cup of Tropic Marin part B solution mixd to the recommended concentration raises my tank's dKH by 0.36.

If the salt was mixed badly and there was a lot of carbonate precipitate in it, would that have been enough to make the corals angry do you think?

[Masonjames]

The alk drop, and lack of being able to raise it may be a symptom of running a sewage treatment plant. Aka, dirty as sh** sandbed. If that sand bed is full of garbage and the system is trying to process it the bacteria may be using alk as a carbon source trying to keep up.

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by Masonjames

The alk drop, and lack of being able to raise it may be a symptom of running a sewage treatment plant. Aka, dirty as sh** sandbed. If that sand bed is full of garbage and the system is trying to process it the bacteria may be using alk as a carbon source trying to keep up.

I suppose that's possible, but I do vacuum my sand at least once a month, sometimes more. I started doing it in the spring because I kept getting ugly patches of cyano in the same places on the sand. My mind was blown by the amount of crud that came out of it the first couple of times, but it seems to be pretty clean now. I still have problems with cyano, just never on the sand now.

[Masonjames]

Ya I really don't know for sure. But all issues like that can be a good indicator of a tank heading towards "old tank syndrome". But if you have been on top of keeping the tank free of debris then it may not be the issue. Or you may be just slowly working your way out of it. To me it seems likely this could be the issue but really its just a guess.

[asylumdown]

*sigh* a guy just can't catch a break. Friday night I used the spigot on my skimmer to drain the collection cup. Forgot to close the tube and left it open to the drain overnight. Woke up Saturday morning to an angry looking tank and RTN in progress all over the place.

Bristle worms must have spawned or something in the middle of the night and drove the skimmer nuts. Salinity in the tank was 1.012. Worst. Timing. Ever.

A conductivity sensor that shuts the skimmer off would have prevented this. I suppose it's time I make the investment.

[straightrazorguy]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

A conductivity sensor that shuts the skimmer off would have prevented this. I suppose it's time I make the investment.

Bummer, man, sorry to hear. I got an Avast skimmate locker with their pressure sensor. It plugs into my controller and kills the power to the skimmer when the container is full. Best investment ever!

Great tank, BTW!

[Delphinus]

+1 on the Avast skimmate locker. I have the one that is basically a lid for a 5g bucket. Works well.

You could craft your own DIY if you're crafty but they're pretty reasonably priced all things considered..

[asylumdown]

freshly mixed at 1.028 (man it's hard to mix a small volume of salt water!) it tests at 10.92 dKH, so at 1.025 it would be lower, but still on the high side, probably in the 10s.

So I think I get what happened, and it was a stupid rookie mistake. The alk in the display was 6.2 when I did the water change. It was 6.35 after the water change, but that was after I let the whole tank homogenize for 10 minutes. For a good 40 seconds to a minute after the water change, the water coming out of the return nozzles would have been anywhere from 90% to 70% "new" water, so while the net change to the tank was small, the acutely localized swings would have been huge.

I don't know why I've never had this problem before unless H2Ocean mixes with a much lower alkalinity?