wowser Posted September 24, 2015 Posted September 24, 2015 I have a 27 gallon aquacube that keeps losing salt! I can't seem to get it at 1.025. A few days ago it was at 1.023, then I slowly added about 2 quarts of 1.026 as top off figuring the fresh would evaporate (I use lots of top off as it's an open top) and leave my tank close to 1.025. Next day it was at 1.023 again! What's going on? I am using a digital salt meter that's calibrated. I don't have any leaks and not much salt creep on the edge of tank. Could my clam or big RBTA be eating my salt?
ManGups Posted September 24, 2015 Posted September 24, 2015 Is your water level in the tank the same each time when you top-off? If your tank say evaporates 1 gallon a day and your top-off dumps 2 gallon - the SG is going to drop.
jedimasterben Posted September 24, 2015 Posted September 24, 2015 who's eating my salt? sorry, it was me.
joy13 Posted September 24, 2015 Posted September 24, 2015 How are you testing your water? If you are using a refractometer are you calibrating it?
wowser Posted September 24, 2015 Author Posted September 24, 2015 Yes, I have an auto top off system. I put a few quarts of salt water in on top of that and figured the salinity will rise as the water evaporates. But the next day the salinity is lower! I have a Milwaukee MA887 Digital Salinity Refractometer that I calibrate with the included distilled water.
jedimasterben Posted September 24, 2015 Posted September 24, 2015 make a saltwater standard to check your refractometer for actual calibration at 35ppt.
Newstead Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 I have the same issue -even adding 1.025 to top off instead of RODI yet it still keeps dropping to 1.023. I may have isolated the problem to my skimmer, which I cannot keep from a wet skim. Going to try turning it off the next few days and see if that fixes the problem.
Markburns43 Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 Skimming wet through the week always lowered my sg to 1.023 from 1.025 topping of daily
ajmckay Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 I think you'll find that the salinity of the skimmate is pretty close to your water though... It shouldn't be overly salty. I would start turning things off (start with ATO) for a few days and manually top off and verify that when you start with a certain salinity the next day it should be slightly higher from evap.
Hig789 Posted September 26, 2015 Posted September 26, 2015 How often do you have your arms in the tank? I doubt that much water it wouldnt change much but with my 15 gallon of I am constantly messing around in the tank it's enough for my ATO to kick on. Just a thought.
wowser Posted September 26, 2015 Author Posted September 26, 2015 Might try keeping the skimmer off for a while and see if that helps. Don't even know why I bother with the thing as I'm always needing to fiddle with it. My tank is so old it's on auto pilot at this point and I hardly have any issues with algae or cyano.
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