Really low salinity how to solve

[Discordian]

I have a drain in my sump that enables me to do easy water changes - just add fresh saltwater and the excess goes down the drain. The problem is I left RODI water on and massively lowered my salinity (I know really dumb). By the time I figured out what was going on my salinity was at 10 PPT.

I have fish, corals and inverts. Shrimp are dead. Fish seem fine. Corals are looking very bad.

How should I address this? All the advice is to go slow. If I leave it at 10 and just add saltwater to top off, I am worried it will take a long time to get to get to levels that every thing can tolerate.

Is there some level I should try and get it to realitivly quickly (over a day or two) then let evaporation go from there? Or should I just go slowly?

 

[Azedenkae]

I have fish, corals and inverts. Shrimp are dead. Fish seem fine. Corals are looking very bad.

How should I address this? All the advice is to go slow. If I leave it at 10 and just add saltwater to top off, I am worried it will take a long time to get to get to levels that every thing can tolerate.

Is there some level I should try and get it to realitivly quickly (over a day or two) then let evaporation go from there? Or should I just go slowly?

Normally, it is good to go slow.

In this case, you gotta go fast. Bring your salinity up to 35ppt ASAP. Do as many water changes as you need to do it.

Normally, the effect of a quick change is worse than a lower salinity, hence advice would normally be 'go slow'. In this case where you already start to have deaths and everything, no my advice is absolutely go fast. Any harm caused by going fast in this case is better than deaths. So yes, lesser of two evils. Go fast. Bring up salinity as fast as you can.

If you really want, you can take your fish out and bring salinity up more slowly for them, but for the corals, gotta go fast man.

 

[Aldrinlights]

If it were me personally I would remove all of the living fish and corals then bring the tank up to the correct level and drip acclimate the fish not increasing the salinity to them more than 1 full point per hour.

 

[ApoIsland]

Normally, it is good to go slow.

In this case, you gotta go fast. Bring your salinity up to 35ppt ASAP. Do as many water changes as you need to do it.

Normally, the effect of a quick change is worse than a lower salinity, hence advice would normally be 'go slow'. In this case where you already start to have deaths and everything, no my advice is absolutely go fast. Any harm caused by going fast in this case is better than deaths. So yes, lesser of two evils. Go fast. Bring up salinity as fast as you can.

If you really want, you can take your fish out and bring salinity up more slowly for them, but for the corals, gotta go fast man.

Agreed. I think the corals could care less about the quick increase in salinity.

I would separate the fish though if they have been in the lower salinity for a day or two and raise them up slower.

 

[Discordian]

Tell me how this sound. I am mixing some higher salinity water now like 45 ppt. Then my water change system adds about a gallon every 10 minutes. The total water volume is about 100 gallons. My water change station holds about 50 gallons. If adjust up to normal parameters over the time it takes to empty my water change station would that be a decent balance between speed and protecting the fish. My LFS keeps fish in low salinity tanks and I have never had a problem drip aclimating them at similar speeds.

 

[Aldrinlights]

That equation would equal adding high saltwater over about 8.3 hours. I believe this could be slow enough but the problem would be overshooting the salinity which will definitely hurt the fish. You''ll have to be very careful.

 

[Discordian]

Normally, it is good to go slow.

In this case, you gotta go fast. Bring your salinity up to 35ppt ASAP. Do as many water changes as you need to do it.

Normally, the effect of a quick change is worse than a lower salinity, hence advice would normally be 'go slow'. In this case where you already start to have deaths and everything, no my advice is absolutely go fast. Any harm caused by going fast in this case is better than deaths. So yes, lesser of two evils. Go fast. Bring up salinity as fast as you can.

If you really want, you can take your fish out and bring salinity up more slowly for them, but for the corals, gotta go fast man.

Thanks so much for everyone's help and advice. I wanted to report back with a status update. I raised salinity up to full salinity over about 9 hours. Fish were all out, looking well and feeding when I was done.

Now a few days later I can report on my corals. I have three zoa varieties two of them are still looking a bit off but otherwise doing fine. The third was a new addition and was still settling in to my tank. It has not opened up yet - I hope it will. I have 1 small acan colony it is puffy and has its feeding tentacles out, but it did suffer some color lose. My Favia coral looks good. My favites had some very minor loss of new growth tissue, but it has not progressed and its tentacles are out again. My chalace is puffy again and looks pretty much the same as it did before. Side note: I never knew how 'puffy' my chalice was until this happened. My 2 ricordia Florida are tiny (they went from almost half dollar size to smaller than a dime) and I don't know if they will make it. My torch coral has progressing tissue loss up from its base. It has reached the top of the skeleton and it is not looking good.

I am most sad about the torch coral any thoughts on how so save it would be welcome. Right now the plan is don't touch it and dose amino acids.

Thanks again for your help as this new reefer faced his first major screw up.

 

[Aldrinlights]

Thanks so much for everyone's help and advice. I wanted to report back with a status update. I raised salinity up to full salinity over about 9 hours. Fish were all out, looking well and feeding when I was done.

Now a few days later I can report on my corals. I have three zoa varieties two of them are still looking a bit off but otherwise doing fine. The third was a new addition and was still settling in to my tank. It has not opened up yet - I hope it will. I have 1 small acan colony it is puffy and has its feeding tentacles out, but it did suffer some color lose. My Favia coral looks good. My favites had some very minor loss of new growth tissue, but it has not progressed and its tentacles are out again. My chalace is puffy again and looks pretty much the same as it did before. Side note: I never knew how 'puffy' my chalice was until this happened. My 2 ricordia Florida are tiny (they went from almost half dollar size to smaller than a dime) and I don't know if they will make it. My torch coral has progressing tissue loss up from its base. It has reached the top of the skeleton and it is not looking good.

I am most sad about the torch coral any thoughts on how so save it would be welcome. Right now the plan is don't touch it and dose amino acids.

Thanks again for your help as this new reefer faced his first major screw up.

Thats wonderful news. I think your plan for the torch sounds logical.