High Tide Aquatics

Fritz salt

OnTheReef said:
Crystal clear does not mean fully dissolved or parameters stable. For example, Instant Ocean has a massive alkalinity spike that takes at least 4-6 hours to come down. As I mentioned in my post, Fritz salinity continues to rise for some hours after initially dissolving. I only made the mistake of using freshly mixed saltwater once, when I was a newbie.
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Oh? Good to know. Didn't realize that salinity could rise after everything is dissolved. Witchcraft I tell you!
 
sfsuphysics said:
Oh? Good to know. Didn't realize that salinity could rise after everything is dissolved. Witchcraft I tell you!
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The witchcraft is that millions upon millions of tiny, unseen demons hold the salt crystals together. Water, especially warm circulating water, weaves a spell that is lethal to tiny demons. However, being so persistently evil, the demons hang on to the bitter end, holding yet smaller and smaller salt crystals together, suspended in the water, yet too small to see. As the demons in these microscopic particles drown and die, they release their hold and the particles dissolve smaller yet, causing salinity to rise. -- Eric's Demonology, circa 1017. :D
 
Julius Chen said:
I did not know it is bad to use freshly mixed salt water right away.
Is 2 hours mixing of Instant Ocean salt still not long enough?
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From Instant Ocean's online instructions

Q: What is the proper way to mix salt water?
A: Always add the salt mix to the water, not the other way around. Adding water to the salt mix briefly creates a highly concentrated solution that can lead to precipitation of some ingredients.
Always allow newly mixed salt water to circulate with a powerhead or airstone at least overnight before use. This allows the carbon dioxide in the aquarium water to reach equilibrium with the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which normalizes pH. It also adds oxygen.

I've never had a serious problem by following this advice. I generally err on the longer side though, I prefer to tumble new salt mix for 48 hours before use.
 
My Echinata frag RTN last week, and I checked my Alk. It was 7.4, where it was 7.9 a few weeks earlier. Found out my stored Fritz salt water was at 6.9-7.0, where it was 7.9-8.0 a few weeks ago. I didn't do large water change yet, just small one to two gallon changes.

Not sure if it's only Fritz, but does the Alk of stored salt water continue to decrease the longer it's stored? Or is there a breakpoint or minimum it will stop at? Not sure what factors are in effect.
 
I've heard of stored saltwater losing alkalinity, often due to precipitation type of things, but it'd be scary if the time frame on that was only a few weeks.
 
I have an autodoser dosing throughout the day. Typically, my Alk, Ca, and Mag is stable, but had this recent Alk issue as discussed. My Ca and Mag is stable still.
 
rygh said:
Have you recently changed GFO? That can drop the Alk pretty fast.
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I didn't know this. Just looked it up. That's why my alk went kinda crazy. Switched to brs high capacity gfo and once alk becomes unstable it takes a good amount of work to stabilize it ime.


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I wouldn't think a change of 0.5 dkh over a couple weeks would have been enough to rtn an echinata. I suppose if it was over night perhaps.
 
The echinata was good for several weeks, then bam, tips started going. However, there was a string of snail eggs underneath it... is that suspect at all?

About a month ago (day after introduced to tank):

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Last week:

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I thought maybe lower flow or lower light, so I moved it. Also cut off the dead parts and superglued. Still a goner.
 
I think my autodoser might have been uncalibrated or something. The power has never been unplugged for many years until last month where I unplugged it to rearrange. There is a firmware update for Vertex Libra need to do that tomorrow and see if that fixes it.

But I do know for sure the Fritz stored water had lower alk, which didn't help either.
 
Man seems like Fritz is taking the reefing community by storm! Everyone up here in Oregon is also switching to Fritz salt. All of my LFS swear by it.
 
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