Help: Ultra high salinity

[cet98]

So I inherited a 20 gallon FOWLR aquarium with a pair of ocellaris clowns, a pajama cardinal, cleaner shrimp and two nassarius snails.
I transported everything including all the water from the tank.
When I got it all to my house and finally reset the aquarium up, I immediately took the basic tests just to see where it was at and to my shock, the salinity read 1.038

And for the record, I have calibrated my refractometer as I already have 5 reef tanks I test on the regular.

My question now is, what is the quickest way, while still being safe, to decrease the salinity?

I know that I have safely acclimated new fish and inverts using the drip method from my LFS that were in 1.018 compared to my 1.026 within a few hours but does that hold true in this situation?

Any experienced, knowledgeable recommendations would be greatly appreciated, thank you

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I personally would remove 2% of the water volume each day and replace with ro/di until you get down to 1.027 or lower. That requires about a 30% removal. Thus it would come down in 2 weeks.

 

[rtparty]

Going up in salinity is much harder on fish than going down. If you’re confident in the salinity reading, just remove 1 gallon of water and replace with 1 gallon of RO. Do this as many times as needed over an hour or so