How should I raise my salinity back up

[BrettE]

Hi all,

Mistakes were made, and I dumped a whole bunch of RO/DO into my sump, and onto my floor. We got everything cleaned up, but as a result of all this, our salinity is low. It dropped from 1.025 to 1.021 in just a few minutes. Eek.

I've read a lot of posts that suggest putting salt water in the ATO to bring up salinity. By my estimation, that will take almost 3 weeks. That seems like a long time.

I have about a 160 gallon total water volume. To take 160 gallons from 1.021 to 1.025 @ 78F, I think I need to add about 8.8 lb of salt to the system. If I'm using 1.025 top off water, I will need add about 27 gallons to add 8.8 lb of salt. My ATO is 15 gallons, and lasts about 10 days, so we're looking at about 20 days.

In the tank I have 2 clows, a fire fish, a cleaner shrimp, 4 tiny soft/lps corals that were like $20, and some snails (ceriths, turbo, and astrea).

I'm a newb, so I'm not sure what I should do.

What would you do?

Thanks!
Brett

 

[DrkNMighty]

Hi all,

Mistakes were made, and I dumped a whole bunch of RO/DO into my sump, and onto my floor. We got everything cleaned up, but as a result of all this, our salinity is low. It dropped from 1.025 to 1.021 in just a few minutes. Eek.

I've read a lot of posts that suggest putting salt water in the ATO to bring up salinity. By my estimation, that will take almost 3 weeks. That seems like a long time.

I have about a 160 gallon total water volume. To take 160 gallons from 1.021 to 1.025 @ 78F, I think I need to add about 8.8 lb of salt to the system. If I'm using 1.025 top off water, I will need add about 27 gallons to add 8.8 lb of salt. My ATO is 15 gallons, and lasts about 10 days, so we're looking at about 20 days.

In the tank I have 2 clows, a fire fish, a cleaner shrimp, 4 tiny soft/lps corals that were like $20, and some snails (ceriths, turbo, and astrea).

I'm a newb, so I'm not sure what I should do.

What would you do?

Thanks!
Brett

I think you would just turn off the ATO and let water evaporate. This should naturally raise the salinity back up to your desired level. Then you would just turn your ATO back on.

 

[DrkNMighty]

I think you would just turn off the ATO and let water evaporate. This should naturally raise the salinity back up to your desired level. Then you would just turn your ATO back on.

Should mention to manually top back off with salt before turning ATO back on or you will be in the same situation again.

 

[DaneGer21]

Put saltwater in your ATO like you mentioned. It’s the easiest IMO. Weather it takes 3 days or 3wks, 1.021 isn’t the end of the world

 

[exnisstech]

Rather than add to the ATO I have overfilled the sump with saltwater then let it evaporate and raise salinity. I leave the ATO on just in I forget to keep an eye on the water level. Repeat as needed.

 

[BrettE]

Should mention to manually top back off with salt before turning ATO back on or you will be in the same situation again.

Right. Using this approach, I am the ATO, and I'm topping up with salt water until we've hit 1.025 in the tank.

Put saltwater in your ATO like you mentioned. It’s the easiest IMO. Weather it takes 3 days or 3wks, 1.021 isn’t the end of the world

I think this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to be gone for 5 days during this period too, and I think this approach would be the most consistent over time.

I'm also planning to put a big fan near the tank to get some additional air movement. Perhaps that and some additional surface agitation will increase my evap rate.

 

[KrisReef]

I have watched salt being dumped into a rock filled sump to adjust the salinity to the marine section of a wholesale reef system where bagging fish and ato water replacement had dropped salinity. Heaps of white salt dissolving by the slow movement of water in the sump and this was common practice.

I would pour a cup of salt at a time into my sump ( try to avoid putting it directly into the return pump intake) and allow that to dissolve and repeat until the salinity level was back to normal. This salinity change is similar to what happens around river intakes on tropical reefs without issues.

I would want to get it right asap so I go away after I have seen it happen.

 

[Doctorgori]

all the above and yup ( to a point) I’ve added salt directly ( supposedly a no no)

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Adding salt directly to a sump is Ok if you can be sure that no salt particles get swept up and land on delicate organisms.

It is generally better to raise salinity by replacing evaporated water with salt water, but at some point with a larger and larger salinity problem, it begins to risk being too slow. I cannot say that I know that breakover point, however.

 

[BrettE]

Adding salt directly to a sump is Ok if you can be sure that no salt particles get swept up and land on delicate organisms.

It is generally better to raise salinity by replacing evaporated water with salt water, but at some point with a larger and larger salinity problem, it begins to risk being too slow. I cannot say that I know that breakover point, however.

I guess we'll see how fast I can get the water to evaporate. I had to turn my fans off, because it was having trouble getting back up to normal temp. Now that it's back up, I'll see if my heaters can keep up with the fans.

I was surprised that with the fan on the temp was sitting at 77.3 on my Inkbird and not rising to my 78.0 set point (3 other thermometers were also holding steady). After I turned the fan off it went right up in about an hour or so. I currently have 900 watts of heating in there. I usually only have 600, but the temp was low, and I wanted to give it a little help. The 600 watts usually only runs about 50% of the time to keep it at 78F. I was surprised that the fan had that large of an effect. I guess they really do work for cooling.

Is the heat of vaporization responsible for most of the effect of the fan?