Salinity

[cre]

I currently have a tank this seem to be running great. It has completly cycled and all my fish are alive. My Salinity is currenlty at .020. I want to buy some fish from swf and they say I need my salinity to be .023 ot .026. What do you recommend doing to raise my levels? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[trying4reef]

add salt. I use instant ocean. Put 3 gallons or so of water into a five gallon bucket and add two cups of instant ocean or other salt additive and mix it up really good until all the salt is melted. Add a air stone to arreate the water for a while then add it to your tank. If you have a sump I would add to the sump and let your pump mix it in. Repeat as needed till your salinity is .026. I fyour just adding fish it can go even higher but .024-.026 is a good target. Best of luck

 

[crystain]

You fish will probably be happier if you made the jump to higher salinity over the course of a few days. I have heard that you should not change the specific gravity by any more than 0.002 at any one time. But this may be more important if you have inverts in the tank. Of course if you have inverts at 1.020 they are probably in trouble already....

 

[cre]

Well I understand that I need to up my level buy I can not add the salt directly to my tank. If I have a 72 gallon tank running at .020 how much of a water change do i need to do and at what salinity do I mix my new water to get it to .024?

 

[broomer5]

I would suggest not doing a water change with higher salinity water - but do as mentioned above.
Just mix up some saltwater as you normally would do for a water change, mix some of the new saltwater with freshwater and add as top off water over the course of a week or two.
Monitor the S.G. often as you proceed, and this will allow a gradual increase in tank water salinity and reduce stressing your captive critters.

 

[lillylegs]

cre,
i had the same problem and this is what worked for me. make up a bucket of whatever you want your specific gravity to be then add a couple of cup-fulls at a time for top-off in your tank. as the water evaporates the salt does not so by adding the new salinity it will eventually get there in about a week or so. check the sg everyday. slowly but surely is the best way to go.
see ya, lillylegs