Filling large aquarium

[djf91]

Hi everyone,

So, I’m getting close to filling my 500 gallon aquarium and I am trying to figure out the easiest way to go about it. I have a water tower in the fish room with a 55 gallon water mixing drum that will dump into one stage of the sump but I’d like to avoid making 10 separate batches of saltwater if I can. I’d like to know if it would be ok to fill the tank up with something like 300 gallons of freshwater straight from the RO/DI line and then add some super saturated saltwater to the tank to bring it up to proper salinity. Is there something I’m missing about this approach or will it be fine? Thanks for the help.

 

[homer1475]

Fill it fully with RO/DI, turn on return pump, and any PH's, then dump in salt. It's how I filled my tank.

With nothing in the tank(assuming your using dry rock), then plain RO/DI isn't going to hurt a thing.

 

[djf91]

Fill it fully with RO/DI, turn on return pump, and any PH's, then dump in salt. It's how I filled my tank.

With nothing in the tank(assuming your using dry rock), then plain RO/DI isn't going to hurt a thing.

I would definitely go that route but the tank is already filled with sand and dry rock.

 

[PeterC99]

No problem with your filling strategy as long as there is nothing living in the aquarium yet.

 

[homer1475]

So what. It's dry rock, and now dry sand. Just fill it up, and dump salt in the sump.

 

[djf91]

I figured it might not properly mix/take a long time to fully mix with the sand and rock structure. But if that’s not the case then I’ll just go ahead and dump buckets of salt in the display.

 

[homer1475]

I think I would add it slowly, or just do it the way you described in the OP. Just "dumping in buckets of salt" might cause issues as you noted. I realize it's 400G, but I would still add the salt slowly, and probably right infront of the return pump.

 

[New&no clue]

Hi everyone,

So, I’m getting close to filling my 500 gallon aquarium and I am trying to figure out the easiest way to go about it. I have a water tower in the fish room with a 55 gallon water mixing drum that will dump into one stage of the sump but I’d like to avoid making 10 separate batches of saltwater if I can. I’d like to know if it would be ok to fill the tank up with something like 300 gallons of freshwater straight from the RO/DI line and then add some super saturated saltwater to the tank to bring it up to proper salinity. Is there something I’m missing about this approach or will it be fine? Thanks for the help.

This is how I did my 180. I had rock and sand already in so I made my saltwater a high concentration and then added in fresh water to get it full.

 

[djf91]

Great, thank you all

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

I think I would add it slowly, or just do it the way you described in the OP. Just "dumping in buckets of salt" might cause issues as you noted. I realize it's 400G, but I would still add the salt slowly, and probably right infront of the return pump.

Spot on here. Fill with RODI, turn on heaters and pumps, add your salt slowly over the course of a few days into high flow areas.