Kessil

Salt mixing temperature

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ofzakaria said:
Man the more I read here and outside the forum, look like the best way to avoid issues are:
1- as you said weigh in the salt to be used if you know how much would make the salinity you looking for
2- eliminate temp factor by trying our best to have all conditions within similar or close temp to your system temp.
3- if we are depending on refracto to reach the salinity we want by adding cups of salt to rodi, we should try to have the cal solution similar temp to the refracto and the rodi water so measurments during calibration and during testing the water mix are within close proximity so the atc take care of other compensation..

@rygh do you see a hole in the above?
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Or do what I do and haphazardly throw in a cup of stuff here and there... it's all black magic anyway with this reefing stuff. ;)
 
I agree with the horse - stop.
Mixed salt water does not have to be that accurate.
There is probably more error in the amount of water you take out / replace.

It was more of a fun academic discussion, making sure people understand what is really going on.

Me: I have a crude water fill line on my mixing barrel, then I dump a whole bag of salt in, done.

What matters: Calibrating your refractometer and occasionally checking tank water.
Don't trust controller conductivity probes, don't forget to calibrate. It can get WAY off, and start to kill things.
 
rygh said:
I agree with the horse - stop.
Mixed salt water does not have to be that accurate.
There is probably more error in the amount of water you take out / replace.

It was more of a fun academic discussion, making sure people understand what is really going on.

Me: I have a crude water fill line on my mixing barrel, then I dump a whole bag of salt in, done.

What matters: Calibrating your refractometer and occasionally checking tank water.
Don't trust controller conductivity probes, don't forget to calibrate. It can get WAY off, and start to kill things.
Click to expand...
Man it's really fun discussion. I do not see this this as inconvenient. Wealth of informations are being recorded and exchanged.. such discussions should be encouraged and cultivated for the benefit of the forum and its users.
Thank you @rygh
 
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I honestly don’t think making this more complicated than it is is helpful to people who might come across this conversation. It isn’t that complicated. My original advice stands:

Mix/store the water at whatever temp floats your boat. Cold, room temp, tank temp, warmer, whatever. If you know from previous batches how much salt you need for your size container, use that amount.

The key is to make sure when you test the salinity, that you are testing at around the temp at which you calibrated, and use a device with temperature correction for any minor variability in room temp. This does not mean you have to warm up the whole container. You take the tiny dropper of test water out of the mixing container, allow it to briefly passively warm/cool to the calibrated room temp, then test. Easy.

You definitely do not want to try to calibrate and test at tank temps for hand-held or table top devices, since it will actually be used at room temp. Obviously for probes in your tank, you do need to calibrate and use at tank temp.
 
JVU said:
I honestly don’t think making this more complicated than it is is helpful to people who might come across this conversation. It isn’t that complicated. My original advice stands:

Mix/store the water at whatever temp floats your boat. Cold, room temp, tank temp, warmer, whatever. If you know from previous batches how much salt you need for your size container, use that amount.

The key is to make sure when you test the salinity, that you are testing at around the temp at which you calibrated, and use a device with temperature correction for any minor variability in room temp. This does not mean you have to warm up the whole container. You take the tiny dropper of test water out of the mixing container, allow it to briefly passively warm/cool to the calibrated room temp, then test. Easy.

You definitely do not want to try to calibrate and test at tank temps for hand-held or table top devices, since it will actually be used at room temp. Obviously for probes in your tank, you do need to calibrate and use at tank temp.
Click to expand...
Yup,agreed! Great point on the drops size, did not think of that. Small drops will quickly adjust to room temp.
 
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