You buy a saltwater salt mix (Instant Ocean brand is the cheapest, and it works just fine), mix it well with good water (RODI water is preferred, but some people do use dechlorinated tap water - this comes with some potential risk, depending on what's in the tap water where you're at), test it to make sure the salinity/specific gravity and temperature are good (close to your current salinity and temperature), and it's ready for use. It's generally a good idea when changing from one salt brand to another (or in this case, from ocean water to artificial seawater) to change it out slowly (like 10% a day or similar) to prevent parameters from changing too quickly.
To quote the forum's resident expert chemist on AmGuard and Prime:
I’d love to know if it does anything useful. Don’t be fooled into assuming all hobby products do what they claim. Some some do not.
Does Prime actually "Detoxify" free ammonia, NH3?
This started when @Dan_P was looking at measuring NH3 with seneye and was curious about performance near zero NH3. I suggested trying Prime to artificially zero out the NH3 sensor, and the results were weird... so I checked with my seachem kit. Prime by Seachem is commonly used to treat tap...www.reef2reef.com
I used prime it works, one time I was at 3.0 ammonia and it made it go down to safe levels of like 0.1 or 0.25 after slowly decreasing slowly after adding 5ml of it but it stopped working after a day or two as advertised
They say to add 20ml per 10 gallons for saltwater tanks, so I’d probably suggest adding 20-40ml to start and see from there.
I know less about skimmers than I do about filters honestly, so that’s another one I’d ask the forum in a new thread.
Ok and 1 more thing is it bad to have multiple filters, my new one has biomax in it. I got another filter suggestion and I want to add it as well is it bad to have too many filters and how many filters until it is too many? If there can be too many.
It's not necessarily bad to run multiple filters, but it could be if the tank is over-filtered. If a tank is over-filtered, it's nutrients would basically just bottom out (i.e. the Nitrates and Phosphates would read 0 when tested). I don't know how problematic this would be in your tank since you don't have any corals or similar creatures, but I'd assume it wouldn't be ideal. Another potential issue is too many/too large of mechanical filters could create too much flow in the tank, but I'd guess you would need a seriously over-sized filter to cause real issues with that.
Ty also can I check this post out quick I made it in the wrong one
Ok I am at the beach and found a few interesting things. First, 3 massive hermit crabs.
Second, a beautiful sea snail.
Third, a weird alien rock with egg patterns.
Fourth, a metal thing. Fifth, some sand dollars.
Questions: can I use the samd dollars for decoration, what can I do with the hermit crabs? Sell them or something maybe use one small one in my tank for maintenance? What is the alien rock thing and what is the metal thing. Also I found an octopus giant one and a live sand dollar can I use the sand dollar for my tank? I let the octopus go.
and is this a good spot to find live rocks?
if you can make the response fast cuz I'm about to leave
Generally, the bigger the hermit crab, the less safe it is for other living things, so I’d leave them at the beach. Similarly, the prettier/more decorative the snail shell, the more likely it is to be predatory and eat the herbivorous snails, so I’d leave that one too.
here is metal thing the other snails had thin brittle shells so they were killed by the crabs. Can I sell the hermits because that is how alot of people with tanks do they buy their creatures
I'm not sure what the metal thing is. Legalities aside, the crabs would likely be hard to sell, as not many people keep coldwater tanks, and the crabs are big enough that they would likely kill most other critters put in a tank with them - so you'd need to find someone who wants large, coldwater hermit crabs for their tank (and that's going to be a very niche group of buyers to have to find).
I don't know the laws for California either, but it wouldn't surprise me at all - most states regulate what you can and can't sell without permits.
