Blog Comments

If you have been maintaining the tank with tap water and everything is in good shape why get in a rush. Just do your regular water changes and top off with the rodi and it will start falling. Dropping po4 to fast is as bad as it being high.

Thank you , actually my tap water is good and the fish and corals are all good but my hair algae is bothersome and I am trying to get 0 phosphate. The tapwater here seems to be .5 and the tank is .5 phos. so with the new water hopefully that will go down.
P.S. thnks to Melev's reef for a great deal on the filter.

Yup, you won't want to do it all at once. If you are in a hurry, perhaps do a 10-15% water change every other day or so for a week. After that, you can do weekly or every other week as a maintenance. I'm assuming your tank is suffering from not using RO/DI water, so pay attention to your animals and use that to be your judge on how often you need to be doing water changes. As things improve, you can adjust the water change schedule.

ASAP IMO, albeit slowly.

From my experience, salt creep and skimmer are the primary cause of the slow drop in salinity. In the past, I have run smaller tanks without a skimmer, and I've never noticed the small drop in salinity, so skimming is probably a bigger contributor than salt creep.

First off what are you measuring salinity with and what are the reading s you are seeing?

ya if you skim wetter you would lose a good amount of salt

Skimmate, I use a 1 gal container and when full I add 1 gal of salt mix back to the sump,

salt creep is my guess too as I see there seems to be quite a bit of salt building up onthings. Thanks

no leaksthat I know of!

contrary to popular belief some salt is lost through evaporation. also salt creep. and also the acclimation process.

Do you have a leak?

Here's another flow question? If you point your powerheads up to break the water surface, does that increase the amount that is evaporated? I used to have mine pointed up and it seemed to be increasing the evaporation. Now I have them pointed a little lower but they still move the waters surface. Good point about the skimmer, also if your using an overflow and sump/fuge, they pretty much do all the O2 exchange you need.

Heres another flow question? If you point your powerheads up to break the water surface, does that increase the amount that is evaporated? I used to have mine pointed up and it seemed to be increasing the evaporation. Now I have them pointed a little lower but they still move the waters surface. Good point about the skimmer, also if your using an overflow and sump/fuge, they pretty much do all the O2 exchange you need.

Is it beneficial for 02 exchange? Yes. Although... if you have a skimmer without running biopellets it's likely a non issue. You want your powerhead to blow into an area of little resistance to get the most out of your powerhead. Consider trying to blow through a straw that you're holding your finger in front of, it slows down the flow. If you put your powerhead pointed right at a rock it'll slow down it's flow and reduce it's effectiveness. Point your powerhead into an area with nothing to impede it's flow. :-)

Hey Marc, My tank is 125 with 25 or so sump. Do you have a DIY for a drip system?

It probably is too much. Remind us what size system. Odds are it'll be about one gallon a day, dripped overnight when pH is at its lowest.

its done to aid in water movement more than for O2. As the water comes back down into the tank it moves it toward the bottom by gravity so there is a increased flow

that is a really cool picture

Very nice scoly!