Alkalinity and Salinity Question

themcfreak · Feb 20, 2018

Good evening all! This is a weird scenario causing me to ask this question, but does increasing salinity result in increased alkalinity also? I ask not about adding salt water to increase salinity, but by allowing extra evaporation to increase salinity. Short version, does alkalinity increase if you add nothing to the tank, but allow water to evaporate.

Did my upgrade this weekend (build thread here), and have slightly low salinity, so turned the ATO off. Also trying to do a 24 hour test for how much alkalinity is being consumed, and wanted to make sure nothing extra (like the ATO being off) factored into the equation.

Thanks!

saltyfilmfolks · Feb 20, 2018

The answer is density.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Feb 20, 2018

Certainly it does. Evaporation concentrates (increases) everything that is based on the number of molecules in a certain volume of water. Decrease the volume and the concentration (number per unit volume) rises.

This applies to everything we normally measure except pH and ORP.