1st Time Hypo-Salinity

E

eman

Hello Fellow Reefers,
A little before finishing Matt and Marc's articles on this topic I have lowered the salinity in a 20 gal quarantine tank.
I have (5) survivors after a recent purchase (1) Bi-color Fox Face, (1) Coral Beauty, (2) Pajama Cardinals and (1) Mono Argentus.
RIP Vlamingii Tang. The Fox Face is looking almost as bad as the Vlamingii did yesterday when I got them home. (though with the reduced salinity he is swimming again)
I am stopping at 1.010 tonight due to the temperature drop adding RO water.
I have a heater, light, phosban reactor with carbon, pump and 5 lbs. of live rock.

My questions are:
1) do I need an air pump?
2) will the live rock work for biological filtration? if not how do I make a sponge filter?
3) what will happen to the live rock during this process and will I be able to return it to the display tank?

Thanks,
Troy
 
I would add more live rock for that bioload and pick up an Ammonia Alert from Petsmart or other local retailer to monitor ammonia levels as that seems to be a high bioload for that size setup. Keep in mind you will need to maintain hypo levels for about 6 weeks (I would suggest 8 weeks to be safe) plus a couple more weeks to slowly raise the salinity and for observation to make sure it is gone. You will also need to restart if the salinity rises during the treatment period. The rock will be fine and can be reused although I would recommend bleach and acid wash first just to be safe.

I assume you have powerheads or something in there to move the water around. A cheap air pump and airstone won't hurt. Contact JBSmurf if you need a HOB skimmer as he still has my RemoraPro that will work and still skim under hyposaline conditions. If you did that, you could skip the airpump as the skimmer will take care of adding extra O2 to the water. Your fish will actually "breathe easier" under hyposaline conditions.

The most important things to watch for:

1. Measuring Salinity: Make sure you have a properly calibrated refractometer calibrated with the proper solution. Recheck and recalibrate often.

2. Maintaining Salinity: You really need an ATO to make this work as you are running in a very narrow salinity range where the fish can handle the lower levels but the parasite cannot. I ran as low as 1.008 which is really as low as you would ever want to go but I had an ATO and digital refractometer to keep things in check.

3. Maintain pH/Alk during water changes. You can drop the salinity very quickly so long as you maintain your other parameters. As a baseline, I added .5ml of BRS 2-part/gallon daily to maintain an alk level of 8.5

Here's the recipe I used for mixing up new hyposaline water for water changes. You may need to vary it depending on your salt and what your mixture tests at but this should be a good baseline to get you going:

10g RO/DI at 79 degrees F
- 1.75 cups Red Sea Coral Pro salt to make a mixture with a salinity of 1.009 S.G.
- Alkalinity reads 4.2 at 1.009 S.G. as measured with Red Sea Pro test kit
- BRS calculator calls for 31 ml of 2-part Recipe 1 to raise Alk to 8.5 dKH
- Added 31 ml of Alk to water and Alk then tested at 8.5 dKH

Probably more than you wanted to know but hopefully this will help.
 
First, Thank you for taking the time to address my post.

It looks like I have a list of things to do tonight.
1) I like the idea of having an Ammonia Alert for the tank.
2) calibrated refractometer
3) test alk/ph

Thank you for the offer to use your skimmer. I will contact JBSmurf and make some time to pick it up this week if possible.
In the mean time I will be getting Ammonia Alert (very cool) and an Air pump.

Is there a range I need to keep the salanity or is it a hard 1.009? I ask because I don't have another ATO and can add water manualy 3 times a day.
Being that I am running carbon, (and additional live rock would be difficult to remove from the display) should I work on a sponge filter?

Thanks for all the informaion it was all very helpful.
 
Glad the information was helpful. I've read various articles on hypo range and believe 1.009 - 1.010 is a safe range although my personal experience has been there are strains of MI that are resistant to levels of 1.012 or higher. In your situation, I would suggest the lower range as you're not concerned about going below that with manual addition of top off water. If you are running an airstone and add that skimmer, you could also look at covering up part of the tank to cut down on evaporation.

A sponge filter would not hurt. Take a clean sponge or other media and let it sit in your main tank or sump for a week or two in order to let it populate and then just move it over to your QT or just start it in your QT as you have some live rock that should have carried over bacteria you need. You could also look at using one of those jump-start bottles of bacteria that people use to quick cycle a tank in conjunction with your sponges.

One other bit of advice is to clean all your equipment (nets, siphon hoses, etc.) that you are using with your QT and do not use it again for your main tank. All it takes is a little cross contamination to ruin your efforts.
 
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