changing salts..... big Alk differences... hlp

[r20crazy]

so for the past 10 plus years have only used D-D H2Ocean salt..... cant find it atm so switching to red sea coral pro.... Alk readings are way different..... Cal is within +/- 50 which doesn't bother me. salinity 34ppm on all.

LPS tank up of over 10 years only H2Ocean.... alk reads 6
Pico tank up for 3 months only H2Ocean....alk reads 7
H2Ocean only NSW mixed ro/di for 48 hours.... alk reads 8
H2Ocean (3/5) and red sea coral pro (2/5) mixed to change salts mixed same ro/di for 48hrs.... alk reads 9.6.

Pico has 2 corals don't care about to much, zero fish, and I do 100% wc every week.
LPS is my baby.... don't wanna hurt it...

LPS tank is 38g and only doing a 4g wc in it per week.... will I be ok? theres over 100 heads of $$ torch/hammer/frog in it... and will be a huge loss if goes badly...

I can test in pico and see what happens in 24hrs no problem (and retest perams) but its not really a good indicator. I have never dosed, don't plan to dose... if I need a different salt mix I'll buy it, just don't wanna nuke my lps setup.

I have enough D-D-h2Ocean to do about 5 more WC at the same ratio (3 parts d-d to 2 parts redsea) per week... so it would be a slow-ish increase... but redsea cp says it mixes to 11.5 alk on its own (have not tested this yet but can)

LMK your thoughts...

 

[mcshams]

One thought is to make your new salt mix, determine alk, then lower it to your desired amount by adding vinegar prior to adding it to your tank. You can eventually acclimate your tanks to the newer alk from this salt mix so that this intermediary step won't be needed as your tanks will have adjusted...or you'll need to keep lowering the alk prior to the salt mix every time.

The other thing that should be noted...is depending on the volume of water change, your net effect on alk is quite low. You are moving 4 gallons per week on a 38g tank...just over 10%. IF you had an alk of 8.0 in the tank, and replaced it with salt mix/water of 10dkH...you'd effectively raise the tank's alk 0.2 (please check math on this, but I think I'm right here). So in time you'd gradually change the alk to the newer standard of the salt mix you are using.

You could decrease the water change amount as well.. such as 2 gallons per week if you felt nervous on that.

I will look forward to others' opinions as well.

 

[r20crazy]

Did the 100% wc on the pico. will test it tomorrow to see if values different... didn't touch the 38g... would like some additional thoughts b4 I do anything with it... thanks mcshams for your input.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

One thought is to make your new salt mix, determine alk, then lower it to your desired amount by adding vinegar prior to adding it to your tank. You can eventually acclimate your tanks to the newer alk from this salt mix so that this intermediary step won't be needed as your tanks will have adjusted...or you'll need to keep lowering the alk prior to the salt mix every time.

The other thing that should be noted...is depending on the volume of water change, your net effect on alk is quite low. You are moving 4 gallons per week on a 38g tank...just over 10%. IF you had an alk of 8.0 in the tank, and replaced it with salt mix/water of 10dkH...you'd effectively raise the tank's alk 0.2 (please check math on this, but I think I'm right here). So in time you'd gradually change the alk to the newer standard of the salt mix you are using.

You could decrease the water change amount as well.. such as 2 gallons per week if you felt nervous on that.

I will look forward to others' opinions as well.

The alk depletion that vinegar causes in salt water disappears as soon as the acetate is metabolized by bacteria, so this won't stop the alk from getting a higher than before.

The acid used needs to be a mineral acids, such as HCl (muriatic acid) or sodium bisulfate.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

The Red Sea Coral Pro is among the highest alkalinity salts available. You can drop the alk in it (the way I suggest, not vinegar), do smaller changes, or let the tank values rise.

You are adding no alk to the aquaria in other ways?

 

[homer1475]

I'm with randy on this one.

I use regular old purple box IO, and my NSW mixes up to around 10ALK. I add muriactic acid to lower it to my tanks levels of 7ALK.

Calculations are pretty simple really:

Water volume x DKH drop x .123 = ML of acid to add. DO NOT, AND I REPEAT DO NOT ADD THIS TO A TANK WITH LIVING CREATURES IN IT!

Basically in laymens terms: for 30G of water to drop the DKH by 2:

30 x 2 x .123 = 7.38 or 7.4ML of acid.

Muriatic acid is pretty easy to source at the local big box store, or I buy it at my local ACE hardware.

 

[r20crazy]

thanks for the info.....

I don't dose or add anything.... never have, don't plan to. (no reactors, etc)

I think what I'll do is use the rscp to slowly (like over a month) get the alk up to about 8 in the lps tank, then switch to regular redsea. I'll add in rscp as needed to keep alk stable.

 

[r20crazy]

started the salt switch over process in LPS tank..... 1st day added 3gal of the h2ocean/rscp mix.... 2 days later did 5g more. after this:

sal: 1.024 (increasing this as well)
Cal: 410
Alk: 6.6 (up 0.6)
PH: 7.42
no Mg kit yet

will wait another 5-7 days and do another 5g h2ocean/rscp wc, and retest before. even thou said I wasn't gonna dose ever.... I ordered kalkwasser today to put in ato if needed. also ordered regular red sea salt so when I get Alk to like 7.5-8 I'll only use it (or so is the plan at the moment)

 

[DanConnor]

The regular red sea salt mixes up to about 9, fyi

 

[GoVols]

so for the past 10 plus years have only used D-D H2Ocean salt.....

Yeah,
I used it too and it's a bummer / at 35 ppt it mixes to about 9 dKH in alk.

I was going to go back to the Red Sea Blue Bucket, comes in at about 7.8 to 8.0 in alk


But, these salt prices are getting so high, I'm thinking about going back to regular Instant Ocean.