quick salinity boost needed, help?

[clive1001blue]

my 100 gal. + 25 gal sump is running with a salinity of 19 and I will be moving the whole operation to a 65 gal. holding tank (yet to be set up) of new water in about 4 weeks. I know my salinity should be about 24 so I am going to set the salinity in the holding tank to 24 before I yank everybody (live rock, crabs, shrimp, snails, fish) and move them over. In order to minimize the acclimatization on the other end and so as not to shock all the inhabitants I want to try to get the salinity in the present tank from 19 to 24 gradually over the next 4 weeks. I think this represents getting at least 8 lbs of salt in (forget my high school chemistry) I tried to mix a supersaturated solution for dripping but the solution is cloudy and I'm worried about buggering the tank's water chemistry. anybody have any idea's? p.s. here's my design for a kalk/solution drip system (not well suited for large deliveries), well suited for a nano or <50 gal.[/i]

 

[Anonymous]

Just top off with salt water rather than with fresh water, and monitor the SG periodically. This is how I've always done it. You won't have to worry about messing with your water chem this way.

 

[hdtran]

Ack, don't get so complicated.

Just siphon out some of you 1.019 water, and drip in some more concentrated salt solution using a 1 gallon milk jug and a piece of air line tubing. You can bring up 0.001 SG/day without harm, so it won't take 4 weeks--just 5 days from 1.019 to 1.024.

Verbal description of airline drip (takes about 5 minutes to drip 1 gallon): Set the 1 gallon jug (full) on a stepladder or other piece of furniture above your tank. Put air line tubing into jug. Suck air line tubing to fill tubing (be careful not to inhale the salt water!). Pinch closed before you inhale. Lower tubing into tank. Voila! Siphon started, through airline tubing. Be sure that you are dripping into a high flow area (near a powerhead, say).

Better yet, drip it into your sump.

As for how much salt to add: 1.019 SG is about 26 ppt; 1.024 is about 33 ppt. After doing all the math, 8 lb salt is pretty close to right. It takes a lot of salt to saturate in water (about 25%, if I remember). If you go half-saturated, that's about 8 lb of salt into 64 lb of water, or 8 gallons of water, so do 2 1 gallon bottles/day.

 

[taikonaut]

As you already found out, there are a million ways to raise the salinity.

As to your kalk dripper, it works. However, one of the drawback is difficult in refilling the container without distrubing the residue.

 

[hsosa]

Make sure you are at the same temperatures when mixing your water. You should be fine. Good Lukc

 

[cdeakle]

Just top off with salt water rather than with fresh water, and monitor the SG periodically. This is how I've always done it. You won't have to worry about messing with your water chem this way.

I do the same thing, works very good...

 

[clive1001blue]

yeah thats the drawback, everytime you want to whip a new batch of Kalk you have to take the thing down, un-stopper and mix a new one, the kalk residue is wasted, unless you want to retemper it with new water...