Saltwater Top up

Elrond

Elrond

Joined
7 May 2007
Posts
274
Reaction score
6
Location
Cape Town
Guys,

I do my water changes every 2 weeks (20%), after about a week, there's been enough evaporation (and salt spillage) to warrant a 3-5l saltwater topup. I can work my way around this by adding closed bags to the sump to increase the water level but this isnt very neat.

I'm thinking of a 20l bucket with 10l in it and a small powerhead, but again this is something else to maintain and that requires space/power and effort.

What do most people do?

Thanks,
E
 
Elrond are you topping up your evapourated water with RO daily ?
 
Dragonreef,

Yes, but I find there's a slight drop in salinity if I only use RO to topup.

-E
 
I have also found I need to top up with salt water to keep my salinity stable. I am not sure if it is my skimmer skimming too wet or what it is. There is not much salt creep in my tank though.
 
This is what I do, although it is probably totally wrong but anyway, I find that after a couple of weeks of RO topping up, my salinity will have dropped roughly one point (1.025 down to 1.024), so what I do is make 80 litres of Salt Water mixed at 1.026 and then use this for top ups, so I am effectively replacing evaporated water with salt water, once my salinity has come back up to where it was, I then switch back over to topping up with RO.
 
Last edited:
No problem with that method viper, your loss will be caused by skimmers and salt creep, mostly skimmers esp if you skim wet. Elrond what are you using to test sg?
 
i also got the salt creep issue,and it drops my SG,i do at times top up with NSW but very slowly,a drip method
 
If you know how much water you evaporate per week and How much salt water you need to add, why not just make up your RO with some salt mixed in ie if you loose 20l a week to evap and need to add 5l of slat to get the salinity right just mix 5l of Salt water with 15L of RO and then top up with that mix, this should keep you salinity pretty stable...

All I do is add a little extra water when I do my water changes this keeps mine at 1.025 (drops to around 1.0245 over the course of a week).
 
I find that interesting as my QT tank keeps on climbing, every time I check it I find it at around 1.027 and have to keep on adding R/O to bring it down, now I know it is probably cos I don't have a skimmer on the QT, I did not know a skimmer had an effect on salinity !!
 
Elrond, I would suggest u check your salinity wit a decent refractometer, those swing arm goodies are about as accurate as a taliban sniper with the shakes
 
Muz said:
I find that interesting as my QT tank keeps on climbing, every time I check it I find it at around 1.027 and have to keep on adding R/O to bring it down, now I know it is probably cos I don't have a skimmer on the QT, I did not know a skimmer had an effect on salinity !!
Click to expand...


Not having a skimmer won't make your salinity climb.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom