I screwed up

[ofblong]

Well bought 5 gallons of ro water and put salt in. checked next day and the salinity was BARELY above the 1.00 line. So I added more not thinking about the fact there was a bunch of salt clumped at the bottom. looked yesterday and stirred it all up cause it was only about 1.005. Well today I check and its 1.040. DOH!!!!. good thing the salinity in my tank is down so im adding a little of that to get my tank salinity up then im gonna replenish what I take out with fresh ro water.

Moral of the story

use a heater AND a powerhead when you mix sw so that it all gets absorbed into the water so you dont add more salt needlessly lol.

 

[Hypertek99]

I always use a powerhead when making saltwater. I leave it over night and it's ready the next day.

 

[ofblong]

I always use a powerhead when making saltwater. I leave it over night and it's ready the next day.

well I was trying to mix it the "cheap" way and now im paying for it lol.

 

[reefboy]

In every scenario of this hobby unfortunately most cheap ways are usually wronge not all the time but most like if your a good DIY'er but if your like me you gota pay for it lol.

 

[fly guy]

the salt you mixed up was worthless

if you dont have the water moving when you pour it in and pour it in slowly, you get too high of alkalinity with the calcium and all the calcium as well as who knows what precipitates out of solution. I imagine you have a hard white layer on the bottom of the bucket??

If you are making small amounts and dont want to use a pump, a great little trick is to simply have the 5 gallon bucket with like 4 gallons in it, get the water spinning hard with your hand and slwoly pur the salt in....then assuming you are using decent salt after you are done stir it hard for a minute and you should have everything mixed pretty well, it wont have reached equilibrium or anything, but it will be stable and you wont compromise the integrity of the ASW due to mixing it wrong

 

[ofblong]

lol its not even close to being worthless. I have no layer on the bottom anymore. if you read my post you would realize I stirred it up. so it all "soaked up" into the water. Today im gonna mix it in another bucket to get it to the "correct" salinity So far I have gotten it down to 1.035. another .09 to go.

 

[fly guy]

It doesnt work that way. It cant be "undone".

It wont matter a whole lot if you dont have many corals in the tank. But just for future reference, if you ever compeltely compromise the integrity of a bucket or whatever amount of ASW you amke up..........I would never use it in a display personally. It would be fine for cooking rock.

 

[reefboy]

ware did you hear this I've never heard of it needing to be churning to mix right but it helps to use a pump and it needs 24 hours to stabilize just curious ware you got this info from his water should be fine I mix water up all the time in my 125 gal bin with a pump running and salt still doesn't immediately dissipate and everything is happy and checks out.

It doesnt work that way. It cant be "undone".

It wont matter a whole lot if you dont have many corals in the tank. But just for future reference, if you ever compeltely compromise the integrity of a bucket or whatever amount of ASW you amke up..........I would never use it in a display personally. It would be fine for cooking rock.

 

[Nate82]

i've never heard that either? that's wierd i feel like that would be on the bucket somewhere..

 

[ofblong]

It doesnt work that way. It cant be "undone".

It wont matter a whole lot if you dont have many corals in the tank. But just for future reference, if you ever compeltely compromise the integrity of a bucket or whatever amount of ASW you amke up..........I would never use it in a display personally. It would be fine for cooking rock.

LOL wow you make stuff up very well. You cant "lose" the integrity of the saltwater when you didnt dump anything out or add anything extra. Your not losing any of the components of the salt. Nothing was lost/gone got screwed up as it was all absorbed into the water. I did this once before when I had a saltwater tank many years ago and nothing bad has ever happened. matter of fact I did a water change (2.5 gallons) with this saltwater already and the corals are looking happier than they were before the change. The ONLY problem would be that the water can become stale which would be bad for the aquarium.

 

[fly guy]

ware did you hear this I've never heard of it needing to be churning to mix right.

I didnt say it has to be churning to mix right. It just needs mixed in slowly however you achieve it. churning or spinning with a pump or whatever means just makes it easier to accomplish without any precipitation

If it gets poured in too fast however you do it, the entire structure of the salt is ompromised. It wont of course afffect the amount of dilution to your tank water or SG if you are simply doing water changes to rteduce bad stuff in yrou water. But if you are like me, and many other people who do not even need to do water changes exceopt to replenish trace elements that we cant test for, then there would be no point in even doing a water change with ASW that was compromised due to bad mixing practice. It would do more harm than good.

What i said is that if there was a huge pile of salt in the bottom, or if you were to pur the water on top fo the salt instead of vice versa, then the entire balance of trace elements will be compromised and IMO is trash and I wouldnt use it for anything but cooking rock....or a FO tank

 

[fly guy]

LOL wow you make stuff up very well..

I normally would take the time to elaborate on why it doesnt simply mix back up if you wanted to learn anything ..........but Ill spare you and save my breath

happy reefing

 

[fly guy]

oops .

 

[ofblong]

I normally would take the time to elaborate on why it doesnt simply mix back up if you wanted to learn anything ..........but Ill spare you and save my breath

happy reefing

lol it does mix up. where does it go if it doesnt? not that hard to figure out cause it doesnt mix to the bottom.