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5.5 gallon reef help!


Northwest_Reefer

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Northwest_Reefer

I brought home an established 5.5 g reef and overnight it was beautiful. The next day I checked the salinity and it was off the charts high. So I took out about a gallon and added a gallon of fresh drinking water from Walmart(filtered, ozonated, distilled) and brought they salinity down to 1.026. The corals(Xenia, frogspawn) have since shrunk up and look pissed off! Any idea what could be going on? I have a reef test kit coming tomorrow, but I don't want them to die on me!

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How off the charts high? I doubt salinity could swing that fast. Are you sure you are reading the results right?

 

 

If everything looked fine the night before and you added that much fresh water, I would guess that you salinity would be low.

 

How are you testing your salinity? Can you calibrate it against some fresh RO water?

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Northwest_Reefer

I got on of the fluval salinity guages with the swivel arm inside of it. When I tested it initially, it was at the very highest on the meter.

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What did you test the salinity with? What did it read?

 

It sounds like either your test equipment is wrong and now the salinity is too low or you dropped the levels way too fast and the inhabitants have not had time to adjust.

 

You want to do everything slow in this hobby. The inhabitants can live in less than ideal conditions for awhile but they can't handle big swings. They need stability.

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I got on of the fluval salinity guages with the swivel arm inside of it. When I tested it initially, it was at the very highest on the meter.

 

Is it brand new? I would not trust a swing arm, you should invest in a refractometer.

 

So either... the swing arm is faulty and the salinity is actually way too low.

 

or

 

The salinity was actually really high and everything is pissed off from the rapid change.

 

Either way, it seems like the right course of action is to increase the salinity. I guess I would follow the directions on my salt to mix to 1.026 and test that to see if the swing arm is relatively accurate or not and go from there.

 

Or if you didn't toss the water you took out yet... you could use that to increase the levels.

 

Or best option.... if a pet store is open.. I would run my ass there and buy some pre mixed water and a refractometer.

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with the swing arms, sometimes little bubbles stick to the arm and make it float and give a false reading.

 

First test it with fresh water and see what number you get. Then test your tank again making sure there are no micro bubbles.

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I got on of the fluval salinity guages with the swivel arm inside of it. When I tested it initially, it was at the very highest on the meter.

 

You probably had a bubble on the gauge. You need to tap it a bunch after dipping in the water and make sure all the bubbles are off.

 

I use a stick and just knock the arm around real violent.

 

Only time I've seen that happen it's been the cause.

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how did the corals look when your salinity was

off the charts? were they still looking as happy as the

night before? a gallon of regular water in a 5 gallon tank is

a LOT of water. i can't imagine your salinity rose so much

that it would have required 1 entire gallon of non salt water.

 

it is likely your salinity is too low now.

 

research a bit before acting--especially if the corals look

okay. good luck!

 

(and yes, invest in a refractometer--it's worth it.)

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Northwest_Reefer

well, my test kits came in and everything was normal except the nitrates were at 40 ppm. Salinity is now correct. So i did a 1.5 gallon water change to hopefully lower the nitrates. I also added a bag of chemipure blue to my filter. the zoas look fine, the frogspawn is halfway decent, but the xenia have completely shrunk and it looks like the have spit their guts out. I am so confused.

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well, my test kits came in and everything was normal except the nitrates were at 40 ppm. Salinity is now correct. So i did a 1.5 gallon water change to hopefully lower the nitrates. I also added a bag of chemipure blue to my filter. the zoas look fine, the frogspawn is halfway decent, but the xenia have completely shrunk and it looks like the have spit their guts out. I am so confused.

 

 

Xenia can't handle salinity changes (or even high temps). The other corals have better mechanisms to deal with it.

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If everything is where it should be, it's a "wait and see" what happens. If the other corals are fine, don't make any more big changes. In fact, I wouldn't add or remove anything right now.

 

As mentioned, adding that amount of fresh water is pretty crazy. No matter the size of your tank, you want to slowly add it in over time to prevent rapid water chemistry changes. In this case assuming your SG was super high, I would have adjusted the SG over the course of days, not in matter of minutes. No worries, we've all done some silly things out of panic at one point or another :)

 

Bad things happen fast, good things happen slow. :) It might take a couple weeks for them to come around if they aren't completely dead.

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