High salinity, hating myself.

[Sleeping Giant]

Sooo I went on vacation for a week, made new saltwater and did a water change 2 days before leaving. Everything looked great.
Come back home, everything is dying.. check the salinity, it's low..1.015 SG, not sure how though because it was at 1.026 SG the day I left.
So I make a new batch at 1.030 SG to bring up the salinity in the tank, added 20 gallons slowly, check the salinity afterwards, it's 1.026 SG..... everything keeps dying over the next 3 days. Check it again...it's back down to 1.010 SG. I ordered a bunch of Hanna calibration packets for my checker, it arrived today, I calibrated it, got an error message, cleaned it up..there was some build up on the probes. Re-calibrated and it worked, checked my tank and whatta know it's actually wayyyyyy to high...1.034 SG. Went and picked up 35 gallons of RO water from a water store. Removed and added 15 gallons to the tank, now it's at 1.027 SG. I'm going to wait until tonight and recheck the salinity and adjust as needed from there.
So a BIG lesson, keep those salinity checkers calibrated. I let mine go 2 months without calibration and will never do it again.
I lost a tuxedo urchin, hammerhead coral, 2 fuzzy mushrooms, multiple other mushrooms, a bunch of my CUC. My RTB anemone looks like it wants to die, but my clownfish are taking care of it best they can. My Frogspawn looks like poop, I hope I don't lose anything else. All I can do is pray and hope I've done enough to help.
On a brighter note, the high salinity looks like it almost killed off most of the aipstatia, lol

 

[ihavecrabs]

Oh man, that stinks. I try not to make any changes the two weeks before I go on vacations.. Done it before and had issues as well!

My recommendation for future salinity issues is not making the changes (1.015 -> 1.027) or (1.034 back down) as quickly as you did. The stress can be immense for these creatures having to adapt to those salinity changes, more so than the salinity itself (within reason).

Hope things respond well to the new salinity and recover for you.

 

[Reef.]

I guess the take away from this is, if you get a reading on any parameter, that seems out of the ordinary, double check it, then check it a few more times before you take any action.

 

[NowGlazeIT]

Darn that’s the worst when our test kits fail us. I’m glad you found the fix before losing everything

 

[Sleeping Giant]

I was thinking my salt was bad, bought a new bucket today just incase, but I'm glad it's not.

 

[Gtinnel]

Sorry you had that issue, but without something like an AWC failing, a slight leak, or your ATO adding too much water to the system, it should throw up a red flag that your salinity went down. The salt has to go somewhere or you would have to have a lot more water added to the system for your salinity to go down.

I agree that double checking questionable parameters is incredibly important in this hobby, before reacting.

 

[Doctorgori]

sorry to hear..yeah the alkalinity swings with the salt also…ouch …
and in your case you gotta raise salinity: a much harder trick than lowering it
good luck

 

[Sleeping Giant]

sorry to hear..yeah the alkalinity swings with the salt also…ouch …
and in your case you gotta raise salinity: a much harder trick than lowering it
good luck

It was too high, I'm in the process of lowering it now.

 

[Doctorgori]

It was too high, I'm in the process of lowering it now.

re-read …my bad
and I shudda said that it really matter more with fish, whereas inverts can be ticked off going either direction