Salt help? info, your wisdom

[ranz]

Ya done some battle with salinity, (sounds like insanity) I have accepted the cost but getting a grip on keeping a salt balance is actually a nightmare. Don't get me wrong nothing is dieing but fluctuations from 1.021 to 1.024 drive me crazy, is this of the norm?

Let me add in some of the missing blocks first before you jump to any conclusions...
With 450 gallons of volume I figure I am losing 5 gallons of evaporation every 2 to 3 days, for refill I use a calcium hydroxide (kalk) drip system for tank evaporation....(320 ppm calcium levels, can't get them any higher?).

I use to believe the old vantage that when water evaporates you don't lose your salt in the process, I'm not too sure about that anymore?

So here is the problem if I don't continuously add salt-water refill I lose my higher gravity readings, yet if I don't continuously add A (freshwater Kalk solution) my calcium levels plummet below 300-ppm calcium. Finding a happy medium is not an easy task.

Any hints appreciated


Ranzreef

[Canadian Man]

Hey Ranz,
Well only freshwater can evaporate.
Saltwater can LEAK, your salinity moniter (if it's a float arrow kinda thingy) can have an airbubble on it one time and not the next.
How are you mesuring your salinity??

As far as the calcium goes,,,,
Well kalk may keep your levels where they are but raising them to good levels will either require HUGE water changes or A WHOLE CRAP LOAD of calcium additive eg.marine calcium by seachem.

What is your alkalinity of your tank?
Your corals will not remain very happy at 300mg/l of calcium for very long.

[Dresden]

mmm 430 gallons

coughneverdonewaterchangein2yearscough

[Delphinus]

That's weird. If your losing enough salt to notice a drop in SG from one reading to the next, on 430 gallons, you should be noticing a huge pile of salt creep somewhere. Is there an automatic overflow to your drain somewhere maybe? Could water be draining without you knowing how much you're losing?

If there's no leakage somewhere, then I would question your hydrometer. Have you tried measuring your SG with a refractometer? Maybe someone can lend you one temporarily. Or if you don't mind the $100 (ballpark) cost you can pick one up for yourself. (I think they're more like $80 actually but don't quote me on that..)

Do you have a skimmer pulling out a lot of skimmate? If your skimmate is too wet then essentially you are removing saltwater via your skimmer. Again though, it seems very unlikely as a cause to remove enough saltwater to have a four-point drop in SG over 430 gallons (unless the measurements are taken more than a week apart maybe).

I don't know what else to suggest. ??? :? ??? Over time, all things being equal, you should notice a slight drop in salinity in your water (because of things like salt creep, skimmate removal, etc.), but, it should be a very slow trend at best -- something you would be able to compensate for with the occasional water change ... you're right, salt doesn't evaporate ...

...

PS. For a system 430g in size, I would think the only economical and trouble-free method of maintaining Ca/Alk values will be a calcium reactor. Until recently I was maintaining Ca and Alk with two part additives. The one real advantage of the two-part additives method is it's very easy to isolate one number and adjust accordingly to get to your targets. With that said ... you end up being married to your additives, one in the morning, one in the evening (since you can't add them together) ... and boy can that routine get old. Ooops, did you miss a morning or an evening? Whoopsies, there go your values down the drain. And it's a nightmare trying to find anyone to do this for you when you go out of town for any reason. And last but not least there's the cost. OOF! After about 6 months of this, I did a quick calculation and figured by the end of the year I would have spent $150-$200 on additives!!! Well, shoot, there's the purchase price of a reactor. Since the CO2 system costs that much as well, it takes basically two years (for me) for the reactor to pay for itself. And this is just a 75g tank (to be fair though, it IS a tank with a very high calcium demand). Anyways it was at that point I realized that even for my 75g tank, the calcium reactor was the only way to go. Just some food for thought, every system is different, and has different needs ...