Cali Kid Corals

Salinity way way off-25 ppt

L

L/B Block

Supporting Member
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So through a compound of errors, I have found that the current salinity in the tank is 25 ppt (by way of refractometer with calibration solution). I think that this resulted by
1) the water from the last water changed was not well mixed
2) salinity probe on apex way off (by almost 10!)

What is amazing is that all the fish and corals seem to being doing ok for the most part (at least nothing has died)

So I have a new batch of water (35 ppt) was going to swap out 10 gals today over 10 hours (via APEX DOS),
Prob another 10 tomorrow,
And then another 10 Sunday hopefully to get salinity back on track. Although it will raise it only marginally (according to online calculations 30 gal replacement would go from 25 ppt to 28.5)
From there possibly 2-3 gallons a day
It's 85 gal by volume.

I could increase it to 40 ppt I suppose and then get it back up to 30 ppt.

Any suggestions..
Thanks

Lawrence





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Not sure how much water does your tank evaporate, but an easy way to raise salinity is to shut off your ATO and top off with salt water.

As for salinity probe, recalibrate it again, make sure the pouch is at tank temperature before you start. Also enable temperature compensation or it will be off by around 2.
 
roostertech said:
Not sure how much water does your tank evaporate, but an easy way to raise salinity is to shut off your ATO and top off with salt water.

As for salinity probe, recalibrate it again, make sure the pouch is at tank temperature before you start. Also enable temperature compensation or it will be off by around 2.
Click to expand...
Not a bad idea. Off by two-not great.
But it's seriously off my almost 9 ppt right now.
Going to calibrate but also waiting for water to return to 77 degrees. With the heat, it's bumping to 78. Going to try and be exiting as possible


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Coral reefer said:
Seriously, you said everything is ok. Don't rush it. You want to raise salinity slowly. Lowering it is much easier.
Click to expand...


Due for a water change anyway. So will just swap out 10 gallon today (slowly -the DOS goes 750 ml at a clip 4x a hour over 10 hours) And then will simply go back to 1.1 gallons a day with DOS.
There is really is not a whole lot of evaporation in general so will leave ATO as is.
From there it should slowly return to its normal self.

That should suffice?




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My 2 cents - I've never killed anything from too low salinity, but I have killed from trying to change to fast. Completely agree with the above posters to simply let evaporation bring it back up to 35, just top off with only salt water.

Also on the apex probe - They have been 100% reliable for me once I did a couple things:
  • must be in constant flow
  • must not have light on them, think algae growth
  • must not have ANY microbubbles in the water, think skimmers/etc, put them upstream
  • keep snails, stars, aiptasia, etc from crawling and growing in the probe
I have 3 tanks and a mixing station automated by salinity probes for ~4 years.
 
L/B Block said:
Not a bad idea. Off by two-not great.
But it's seriously off my almost 9 ppt right now.
Going to calibrate but also waiting for water to return to 77 degrees. With the heat, it's bumping to 78. Going to try and be exiting as possible

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Forgot the last bit, you will need to enable temperature compensation for it to completely line up. From the manual:

Conductivity measurements are temperature dependent. The degree to which temperature affects
conductivity varies from solution to solution. Seawater typically has a temperature correction factor of 2.1 to
2.3 %/C. In order for the PM2 to automatically compensate for changes in conductivity as the temperature
of the water changes, you must connect a temperature probe to the PM2 and set the temperature
compensation as described below.

Leave the Temperature Compensation set to 0.0 if you are not using temperature compensation or do
not have a temperature probe attached
Click to expand...
 
mattcoug said:
My 2 cents - I've never killed anything from too low salinity, but I have killed from trying to change to fast. Completely agree with the above posters to simply let evaporation bring it back up to 35, just top off with only salt water.

Also on the apex probe - They have been 100% reliable for me once I did a couple things:
  • must be in constant flow
  • must not have light on them, think algae growth
  • must not have ANY microbubbles in the water, think skimmers/etc, put them upstream
  • keep snails, stars, aiptasia, etc from crawling and growing in the probe
I have 3 tanks and a mixing station automated by salinity probes for ~4 years.
Click to expand...
Good to know this...thanks


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