salinity problems

[dnkygirl]

Hi All,

I've been out of the hobby for about a year and recently purchased a slightly bigger tank 46 gal from a member. I am past the cycling stage now and into month 2. I have lots of pods and critters crawling around along with cyano in my refugium and brown diatoms in the display area. I have done 1 major water change after my parameters were stable. I'm currently having a problem with keeping my salinity at 1.25. I am topping off with RO water that has kalk mixed in with it. Here are my parameters:

salinity: 1.20
temp: 79
Phosphates:0
Ammonia: 0
Nitrates: 0
Nitrites: 0
PH: 8.4
Calcium: 400

I have been doing small water changes for about a week. I use the old water in my qt tank that is housing some chromis. Seems like my small water changes are affecting my salinity in a big way. I always thought that adding fresh ro in small amounts has no affect on the salt level... but looks like i'm wrong. I have been removing about 3-4 gallons and i've done that twice. What am i doing wrong?

I am working on slowly raising my calcium back up.. 2 wks ago it was 440... today it's also dropped down to 400 and that's with me dosing with kalk added to my ro water.... crazy... stuff....
btw my fresh ro is depeleting at about 5gal at 2wks... so average that about 2.5 gallons a week. I dose 2 teaspoons of kalk into a 10 gallon bucket.


Demi

 

[Guest]

criters? are you talking about snails and crabs or just stuff from the rocks? i have never heard of any body doseing kalk that way. and i think it would make the water cloudy after a bit. i would stop with the kalk and read up on it more . what are you useing to measure you SAL? are you seting your SAL in the water before adding it to the tank ? to brig SAL up you just add salt water to top off instead of fresh water,but it should stay pretty consistant if you dont have any leeks .you will loose a little do to salt creep but thats not hard to fix

 

[Jeff]

Hi Demi, welcome!

OK, no more dosing. :wink: How do you mix your salt? I'd say for your size tank, I'd mix up about 10 gallons at a time. Recipie: 10 gallons of fresh ro/di water. Roughly 5 cups of a good salt mix. A pump/powerhead and a heater set to around 79. Add water, salt, pump, and finally heater to a large pail and mix for a day or two. During that time, test the salinity a few times and adjust it by adding more salt or fresh water to get it to 1.025 specific gravity.

Do your water change(s). Replace salt water with salt water. However, replace evaporation with fresh water, on a daily basis to bring the water line back to where it was before evaporation. Your salinity should stay constant. If you physically remove water from the tank, replace it with the same amount of salt water.

Keep it going! It sounds like you're on the right track.

 

[dnkygirl]

@ERIC69 wrote:

I am seeing lots of pods and various other life that hitched from the rock i added to seed in the display... When i purchased the tank it came with a live sand bed...and it was seriously alive... i have an over abundance of pods. I added bleached rock with some live rock i got from here and there to re-seed my old rocks and it's going ok.... I added a small clean up crew of blue leg hermits last week. I will be adding some nassarius snails and a brittle starfish once i get my sal back up.

I am also using a pre-filter over the pump to keep the water clear and i also run a phosphate and carbon filter that i change weekly. I didn't think it was strange to dose your ro water with kalk??? I have read up on it... i am diligent with monitoring my cal levels... as i am working towards a mixed tank. I don't want to get into the cal reactor quite yet... not really ready for that skill level yet.

I don't have water clarity issues at all. I have a refactometer to measure sal and i have been doing that weekly as well. Yes the salt creep is annoying... makes my regular maintenance the pits... in the refugium... i get lots of water splash from the way it's setup... the display doesn't get that much creep.

yes i think your right... i will have to mix up some saltwater to replinish my loss and allow the levels to even out over the two weeks... i don't want to kill off my population of pods... ) thanks!!!

 

[dnkygirl]

DheereCrossing wrote:
Do your water change(s). Replace salt water with salt water. However, replace evaporation with fresh water, on a daily basis to bring the water line back to where it was before evaporation. Your salinity should stay constant. If you physically remove water from the tank, replace it with the same amount of salt water.

This is where i went wrong... i should have replaced the amount i removed with saltwater instead of ro... bad deal... tonight i am mixing up some salt... to use for evap... should also affect my cal level...a little anyways... We disagree on the use of kalkwasser... used in moderation it is a great way to manage your cal levels. I think it would be bad if i were using it and not testing my parameters...


Demi

 

[debdp]

Just a couple additional notes... you said you're using the QT water for the main tank. The main purpose for QT is to be sure the new animals have no diseases, bacteria or pathogens that can be transferred to and infect your main display tank. By using the water from the QT to the display anything the quarantined animals may have has been transferred to the main tank. Also, if you have no corals or animals in your new setup that use calcium heavily you really shouldn't need to dose kalk. All salt mixes have the needed minerals, calcium, alklanity, etc. in them and they are replenished when you do water changes. Calcium and alkalinty are normally used up rather quickly in tanks with SPS corals.

 

[WoodDragon]

I'm running 2.5 gallons of top off a day through a kalk stirrer
for some of us it is the only way to go. You will get a lot
of debate on the issue research and make up your on
mind on how you want to maintain your Alk, Ca levels.
I know of people that top off as much as 14 gallons a
day through one.

Mine is a DIY but there are quite a few options on ether
buying one or a DIY. This is how I built my first one. Since
doing a group build on them there have been some changes
that have not been documented yet but will be soon.

http://mysite.verizon.net/tejasdragon/KalkStirrer/kalk.html


WoodDragon






@dnkygirl wrote:

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[dnkygirl]

@debdp wrote:

No i'm using water from the display for my qt.. sorry for the confusion.. also keeping the cal up promotes coraline.

 

[dnkygirl]

Thanks woodragon for the great info on that diy solution. Seems like a reactor would be less messy... I would also not have to tinker with filtering as much.

 

[Double M]

Demi,

I believe that many people who don't use a kalk reactor, add their kalk powder directly to their top-off water with much sucess, so if it works for you, you have many other hobbyists doing what you're doing, fwiw.

Also, I was a bit confused by your post above:

I'm sure that I'm misreading here, but to clarify you should:

1. replace saltwater you take out for whatever reason (water for QT, water changes, adjusting levels, etc) with appropriately leveled salt water. Usually you'll want to match parameters as closely as possible unless you are trying to adjust something upward or downward, i.e., your diplay tank's salinity has dropped to 1.023 and you want it at 1.025, you may want to slightly bump the salinity of your replacement water to gradually bring up the salinity to the required levels.

2. replace water lost through evaporation with ro or ro/di water that is as close to your tank parameters as possible (though many people simply replace their evaporated water with ro/di straight out of the ro/di unit without adjusting for ph, temp, or other levels).

More simply stated:
Saltwater taken out, replaced by saltwater put in and
Evaporation [taken] out, replaced by ro (or ro/di) water put in.

If you slowly drip your ro/di water to replace your evaporation, many people add kalk to that replacement water to kill two birds with one stone without much impacting, ph or risking precipitation.

Hope that clarifies things (if, in fact, things still need clarification).

 

[Guest]

@dnkygirl wrote:

I am seeing lots of pods and various other life that hitched from the rock i added to seed in the display... When i purchased the tank it came with a live sand bed...and it was seriously alive... i have an over abundance of pods. I added bleached rock with some live rock i got from here and there to re-seed my old rocks and it's going ok.... I added a small clean up crew of blue leg hermits last week. I will be adding some nassarius snails and a brittle starfish once i get my sal back up.

I am also using a pre-filter over the pump to keep the water clear and i also run a phosphate and carbon filter that i change weekly. I didn't think it was strange to dose your ro water with kalk??? I have read up on it... i am diligent with monitoring my cal levels... as i am working towards a mixed tank. I don't want to get into the cal reactor quite yet... not really ready for that skill level yet.

I don't have water clarity issues at all. I have a refactometer to measure sal and i have been doing that weekly as well. Yes the salt creep is annoying... makes my regular maintenance the pits... in the refugium... i get lots of water splash from the way it's setup... the display doesn't get that much creep.

yes i think your right... i will have to mix up some saltwater to replinish my loss and allow the levels to even out over the two weeks... i don't want to kill off my population of pods... ) thanks!!!"]ok with the crabs do it slow. to do that mix salt water and use that to replace the evaperated water till it gets up to were you want it and then go back to RO water to replinish your evaperated water. now salt creap is a pain so we try to minimise it as much as posabale . you can do this by runing your pipes down in the water in your sump and or useing a filter bag on the ends . now dosing, i have used kalk for a long time and have a good understanding of the pros and cons . first we dont use the powder its self it will put a powdery film on the rocks and sand and the littlest movement will ster it up . how its used is we put some in a bucket with RO and ster it up and let it sit for 2 or 3 days and the lime gos to the bottom and the water left behind is kalk ,we use that to put in the tank. lime is lime and is not what you want in your tank. now kolk is the german word for setiled lime water and that is what you want in your tank. it is very rich in cal. and alk. that is a over veiw and ther is much more you need to know befor useing it. now for just rasing your cal. with no corals just get a two part aditive at LFS and bring it up. hope this helps

 

[aentrop]

I think you have a solid knowledge of Kalk dosing, and I do mine the same way for my SPS tank.

For the last year about half of my topoff water has been Kalk infused.
That is: Topoff 1 is RO+Kalk, next topoff is just RO, next is RO+Kalk, and so forth.

I mix RO+Kalk in a 5 gallon bucket and then use it for topoff. Works good, would be better if I didn't have the giant calcium sponge of a clam in my tank. My clam will absorb as much calcium as I offer, (I haven't been able to get over 400 yet... which is why I'm going with a calcium reactor)

Only conflict I see so far is, why are you concerned with the calcium level? I don't think you should worry about it until you get some Stony Corals in the tank. From the sound of it you only have crabs and pods, so your calcium level shouldn't drop anyways (theres nothing there to use up the available calcium) unless your using a poor salt mix...

When my reef was new, and had only 1 or 2 stony corals, my calcium level hovered around 420. After I finally got a number of stony corals, it started to drop and I began dosing Kalk to replenish what the corals were using. Just regular water changes should replenish the calcium level unless you have a good amount of stony corals.

Lastly, keep an eye on your alkalinity and pH, and watch how much kalk water you add at once, the pH of kalk water is very high... around 12 or so... So a large dose of Kalk water could have adverse effects if your not careful

 

[dnkygirl]

I finally got it up to 1.025 by adding salt to my ro evap. Thanks everyone for helping!!! All my little critters are doing well. I took the chromis out of QT and they are enjoying the new home. I have been reading more on how to administer the kalk. Here's what i came up with:

Items purchased:

1) Kent doser unit
1) Aquatic lifter dosing pump w/pre-filter
1) Digital timer

I decided to only drip for 1 hour 3 nights a week. I also picked up a alk test kit.. along with a retro fit 250w light kit. Looks like i need way more light than my old 150w unit. I will watch the alk and cal closely to see if this schedule works. I'm trying to come up with a rig for the 250w retro kit... so that i can still use my old coralife hqi 150w during a 6 hour period, then bump up to the 250w for 4hrs... increase to 6 over time.

My QT is working out really well. I picked up a flame angel and 2 clowns. The flame has ich spots and i have started treatment. Unforunately 1 of the clowns arrived with a large facial injury.. and i don't think he is going to make it through the night. He's started doing those death circles...