Salinity Drop?

[GHOSTLY]

I don't know if its my cheap hydrometer or what but I had my salinity at 1.025 and over the span of 2 weeks it went down to 1.021. Everything seems fine but My euphyillia Are kind of closed. How can I fix this in a safe and fast way. Maybe a week

 

[reefsaver]

Salinity usually goes up as evaporation occurs. My first thought would be if you're running an ATO- Auto Top Off, maybe it got knocked and filled the tank a little more? But yeah it's an easy fix, I would just turn off my ATO if I had one and as evaporation occurs I would top up the aquarium with saltwater to bring the salinity up. But a good Salinity tester is very helpful in water changes and monitoring salinity. I use the Hanna Salinity Tester which is just an overkill overpriced high quality waterproof salinity tester. I am currently looking into some kind of multirole testing pen for freshwater and notice a lot that can test for salinity too which would be more preferable.

 

[Biglew11]

Make sure that your salinity is actually low first with another tester or take it to lfs to test.

If it is low, stop the ato and top off evaporated water with saltwater until you reach desired salinity. This is as fast as you'd want to go raising salinity.

 

[GHOSTLY]

I don't have a ATO and i have not topped off in like a week. I tested it and it is 1.023 i think

 

[Pscha4]

I don't have a ATO and i have not topped off in like a week. I tested it and it is 1.023 i think

If you do not have an ATO and have not added water manually then if anything your Salinity would rise as noted in a previous post. I agree with others, find an additional testing method to confirm a true number.

 

[Jekyl]

If you do not have an ATO and have not added water manually then if anything your Salinity would rise as noted in a previous post. I agree with others, find an additional testing method to confirm a true number.

This. Get some calibration fluid for your refractometer and test it before every use. Top off needs to be done daily at minimum once you get salinity correct. Not doing so is more likely what upset your coral.

 

[Reef.]

I don't have a ATO and i have not topped off in like a week. I tested it and it is 1.023 i think

What size tank?

it's impossible for your salinity to drop if you have t topped up in a week, it's almost definitely your salinity reader that is wrong.

I use a Tropic Marin hydrometer, it's never wrong.

Oh and you should be topping up at least once a day, more if you can.

 

[GHOSTLY]

What size tank?

it's impossible for your salinity to drop if you have t topped up in a week, it's almost definitely your salinity reader that is wrong.

I use a Tropic Marin hydrometer, it's never wrong.

Oh and you should be topping up at least once a day, more if you can.

I have no need to. My tank takes 3 days to go up a bit but recently My salinity went to 1.024 so I left it and I came back to it lower. Ill retest it

 

[Suohhen]

The other way salinity can drop is from substantial salt creep. The lid on my qt gets a ton of salt creep from the hob filter and I cover the little gap left where the tubes go for the canister filter with a shirt. In 4 months I have gotten no change in salinity even though there has certainly been some evaporation and a little bit of salt water from the mt goes in everyday with the frozen food. It is pretty astonishing and I check with a freshly calibrated atc refract. Obviously this is a special circumstance and not a display tank but I just thought I'd share.

 

[GHOSTLY]

I washed my lid today and I noticed chunks of salt buildup on there. Could that be a factor

 

[kiwinewbie]

I'm a winemaker by trade and regularly consult for a couple of clients, winemaking is based a lot on science and chemical analysis as well as "feel" and gut feelings as well as drinking a **** load of wine. One of the pieces of advice I give to clients all the time is don't trust analysis that is out of whack. First thought would be to be that the analysis is wrong and retest, check your analysis equipment and techniques, resample retest even get another winery to run the test for you before you react. You think adding too much of something to a reef tank can be costly think about cocking up 100,000 litres of wine.

That being said all of that advice went out the window when I came home noticed I was going through a lot of top off water, corals looked retracted and ticked especially euphyllia's. Tested Salinity to find it 1.020 where I was aiming for and regularly had it stable at 1.025. Immediate thoughts were that I had a leak somewhere in the system and was leaking through the floor. checked the tank and even emptied the sump and took it out test filled it. Meanwhile I went against my own advice and adjusted salt levels aiming for 1.022 over a couple of hours while I tried to find the leak. Upon finding no leak anywhere my heart sunk and immediately switched back to my winemaking processes and checked the calibration on my Hanna salinity checker it was way out reading 1.021 on a 1.025 solution, went back to display tank and now every coral was fully retracted and fully ticked off. retested my tank with recalibrated hanna and it was at 1.029 readjusted back down to 1.025. lost a few corals(although some weeks later also found that I had some Euphyllia eating flatworm which snuck through my dipping programme(guessing eggs?) which would have been why my hammers, torches and frogspawn where looking ticked not a low salinity issue at all.

So, lesson that shouldn't need to be learned was. Don't react to any analysis until you are absolutely sure that the analysis is what it is. Take a breath and logically think through what could be causing such a result. In my case and yours the only things that would cause low salinity are

ATO going nuts and topping off too much due to leak or very wet skimming. or Faulty analysis, I can't think of anything else which would cause salinity to drop.

Oh another thing from the winemaking front(we use hydrometers a lot) Hydrometers can go out of calibration, a small chip especially on bottom will throw them, if they are dirty it can throw them too(although this is more so in wine where dissolved co2 will come out of solution and adhere to hydrometer causing it to "float' slightly higher) Also depending on make and quality the scale can actually get bumped giving a false reading. Also be aware of parallax error make sure you read your hydrometer with your eyes level with the reading point.

Also stating the obvious but always rinse your vessel(if you take a sample out of the tank to test) you test in at least three times with your tank water you'd be surprised how a few mis of fresh water will through your result especially if you are testing in a small cylinder)

Another lesson learned was to increase tank size swings are so much slower went from 120L to 600L

Sorry for loooooong response but good to share my experience on being a dick especially when "I Knew Better"

 

[kiwinewbie]

oh and salt creep but I would imagine it would have to be pretty major to drop it that much

 

[Cell]

I don't have a ATO and i have not topped off in like a week. I tested it and it is 1.023 i think

Oops read that backwards. Something is off with your testing.

Have you inspected your hydrometer closely to make sure theres no salt buildup preventing the arm from swinging freely?

 

[Suohhen]

I don't bring up the salt creep to say it is likely the issue but rather that it is a possible factor as the advice is always that salinity will only ever rise and this is not entirely true. Hydrometers are certainly not accurate and shouldn't be relied upon as the main source of establishing salinity. So my advice would be to either buy an auto correction refractometer or take a sample to the LFS and let that establish a baseline that you can work against.

 

[Ocean’s Piece]

Get an accurate hydrometer will be the fix in the long run. Hydrometers are a whole debate that I don’t really want to get on again like I did in this thread:

Best Accurate Hydrometer

no one said it is hard, a child can figure out any of these tests... that obviously isnt the point. The point is many have found these forms of tests inaccurate for whatever reason. Do you find a test more reliable if you have to trust in someone viewing a device in parallel? Microbubbles...

www.reef2reef.com

Just don’t be rough with it like I was.
but if you want a hydrometer that is always accurate, precise, and trustworthy no matter what if well taken care of, get this:

High Precision Hydrometer

Ensure that your equipment is reading correctly and your aquarium is at the right salinity with Tropic Marin's High Precision Hydrometer. Many tank inhabitants are sensitive even to minor changes of the water conditions. Unfortunately as we've all experienced, salinity reading equipment as...

www.bulkreefsupply.com

 

[GHOSTLY]

I re read it at my lfs and it says 1.023. Should I just let it evaporate

 

[Suohhen]

I re read it at my lfs and it says 1.023. Should I just let it evaporate

That salinity is fine. The biggest issue would be related to your major components. If you dose to keep your alk, cal, and mag where you want them then a sudden increase in salinity would do nothing but hurt. In general fast changes don't help and the rate of rise from evap is nice a slow so why not ride it. The issue is that salt creep seems to be keeping your salinity stable so you may want to address that issue and see what you can do to slow salt creep. The biggest issue with staying near the safety limits of salinity is that if you drift a little further that is when bad things start to happen so working towards the middle is advised.

 

[GHOSTLY]

I use red sea pro with nitrate around 10 now and a low phosphate. Im going to leave it and see