Raised Salinity too fast!

[Topreefer92]

** If this is not applicable to this specific forum please let me know**

Hello all,

So my issue has to do with reef chemistry specific to raising salinity too fast!

This past weekend my air conditioning unit in my house decided to die, living in Arizona temperature outside was in excess of 110+ degree with a temperature inside the house around 92 degree for 32 hours. During this time I had fans cooling my 100 gallon system to keep the tank from cooking reaching around 81 degree max. To my luck overnight my ATO failed and continued to pump the tank full of freshwater. I come back in the morning and the salinity is sitting at 1.020 specific gravity. I slowly brought the salinity back up each day with water changes checking parameters each day. Yesterday I am sitting around 1.023 specific gravity and I decided to increase the water volume for the water change, change water was sitting at 1.035 and 20 gallons worth. Now my salinity is sitting at 1.025 and more corals are all super upset about it.

My question is will they possibly bounce back or did I just doom them all? Corals were happy and thriving before I made this rookie mistake of the larger water change. Parameters 24 hours after this change was at 10.7 for ALK (Hanna Checker), Calcium I can't get to change colors so super high (Salifert), Magnesium around 1350 (Salifert). Is there any way to bring these levels back down or do I need to do what Randy has mentioned before and just let it come down itself?

Thank you all for your help

Nick

 

[jccaclimber]

Assuming you don't have any palys that decide to take the nuclear option I suspect you'll be fine. At some point I stopped acclimating frags from my LFS (inspection and dip yes, acclimation no). It's regularly off by 0.002 and I don't have issues.

At this point whats done is done, I'd stop trying to correct as that's just a swing in the other direction (curious what others say about this). Other than the unknown calcium, I see nothing terribly out of line with your other two, and once more I'd rather let them sit stable, seeing as we're many hours in, than swing them again.

For future reference putting salt water in your ATO tank (assuming you don't run kalk in the ATO) is a good way to slowly raise salinity.

 

[Topreefer92]

That is what I am thinking. I started with that and noticed that the ATO wasn't rasing the salinity 1 point per day and noticed others have tried water changes. Again rookie mistake for sure, in all my years doing this I have never had this happen. We learn something new in this hobby everyday!

 

[Brew12]

That is what I am thinking. I started with that and noticed that the ATO wasn't rasing the salinity 1 point per day and noticed others have tried water changes. Again rookie mistake for sure, in all my years doing this I have never had this happen. We learn something new in this hobby everyday!

I agree, you can't undo previous changes. Just do your best to re-establish stability.