adding salt water

[monalisa]

OK, my salt and water are mixed, BUT I only have enough water to fill half my tank. Water level is not near what I need to put in my heater, PHs, etc.
Right now I have 40# of sand and about 20gal of water/salt mix, salinity reading OK, so far.
I'm concerned that I need to wait for my next fill...is this going to be OK?
Ok, question - is it ok for my tank to be stagnant...water/salt/sand... while I wait to add more water? Not more than a few days...hopefully!!

 

[trainfever]

You could always fill your tank the rest of the way and then just add the amount of salt that you need. If you have a powerhead, turn that on. It will keep your water circulating.

 

[who dey]

glad to hear your adding water mona! you must be excited. it only gets better. i would place your powerhead down lower in your tank temporarily for circulation and place your heater on your substrate if it's the submersable kind. if not don't worry, add your water then set in the heater. remember water heats faster than it cools, your tank temp should be around 80 in no time!:joy:

 

[monalisa]

Problem is, that until I get a RO/DI unit (which is in the future), I'm distilling water the natural way...OK, I know what's coming...best I can do right now. Advice????

 

[who dey]

walmart sells it pretty cheap until you get a unit

 

[loodachris]

Yeah its .58 cents a gal its great, but definately invest in a RO unit because those empty gal jugs pile up very fast... plus the hassel of lugging them all around...great workout though

 

[monalisa]

Thanks Who Dey. Yeah, I'm pretty excited about getting this underway. I did manage to get my 2 powerheads in and running, so at least there's movement. I'm hoping to put the rest of the water in tomorrow along with the rest of my equipment and hopefully some rock. Little by little.

 

[monalisa]

I got my tank filled on Saturday. I also put my equipment in and some base rock (which turned out to be live, sorta). One of the base rocks that I bought on Saturday has a tiny featherduster in it, and a really active little bugger too. Will he be okay through my cycle?
I'm going for live rock this afternoon, and I'll probably toss in a shrimp to get things going.
Wish me (and my featherduster) luck!! :jumping:

 

[who dey]

good luck mona!!!:jumping: my feather dusters survived through my cycle. but not too worry i'm sure there will be no lack of dusters when you get your LR

 

[monalisa]

I stopped after work this afternoon and picked up about 15# of live rock and put it in my tank, turned out pretty cool looking too, if I do say so myself. So far nothing exciting on the new stuff except some really tiny bright pink growth. I'm hoping that's going to turn into something keepable. I didn't have a chance to pick up a shrimp yet, so that's tomorrow. How many shrimp for a 37 gal tank, is one enough? Also, I think that before long I'm going to be adding a little more LR, will that start the cycle over again? Fine if it does, I just don't want to put any new "babies" in before the soup is done, so to speak.
Thanks a lot for your help, as always...