HELP! I have a bit of a problem.

[slayers911]

Ok long story short I set up my first ever saltwater tank. It is a 75G tank. I put in some fiji rock that had been out of someones tank for a while so there was nothing living on it. I also put in a piece of florida rock that was alive. Note: I am using tap water to get everything set up with the intent to us RODI water for any future top offs.

Then I decided to put a 20G fuge in also. Well with my wonderful intellect and great command of math, especially basic addition and subtraction, when I added the salt for the additional 40G (top of main tank after rock add and fill up fuge tank) I miscalculated and put in 1 cup per gallon instead of 1/2 cup per gallon. Yeah I know very smart.

So now I am assuming that there is nothing even close to alive in the poisoned salt pool I have created so my questions are:

Can I just drain A LOT of water out and add fresh to level this out?
If I can find a piece of live rock can I add it to start the cycle over again, once I have the specific gravity worked out?
Is there any reason to hold on to the very salty water that I take out of the tank for future top offs?

Thanks for any help......
Greg :doh:

 

[drnecropolis]

Yeah, Drain it down and add freshwater until it balances out.
You can use a peiceof shrimp to restart the cycle, assuming you need to.
I would toss the water.

 

[weaglereefer]

So what is your actual specific gravity right now? If you were running low before hand, it might not be so bad.

As for "live rock", all rock will become live eventually. You get some critters, but the "live" part is generally the bacteria colony that forms from a proper cycle.

 

[slayers911]

I don't know what it is right now. The hydrometer doesn't read that high.....

 

[mapleredta]

slayers911;469659 wrote: I don't know what it is right now. The hydrometer doesn't read that high.....

Throw it in the trash and buy a refractometer asap.

 

[slayers911]

Thanks for the input. Will the high level of salt kill off the bacteria that i had built up in the rock or should that be ok?

 

[ga_daisy]

Don't blow up any brain cells. We all make goofs like this, especially in the beginning. Reef tanks are like carpentry. Measure twice, cut once. Think it through, slowly before ever making a move.

 

[tony_caliente]

I would drain 5 gallons or some fixed amount of the display tank water and store in a foodsafe vessel (assuming there is 0, am, ni, na, etc in there...why waste the Dead Sea saltwater ?). I would then add fresh RODI water to the dispaly tank, wait 15 minutes and measure the SG. If you are still too high, remove another 5 gallons and store and repeat. Make sure the fresh RODI water is the same temp as the display tank water. It would also be a good idea to try use RODI water at 8.2 or so ph. You can then add RODI water to the too salty water until the desired SG is achieved (1.023 to 1.026 or whatever your LFS recommends). Now you have water for your next water change. I use sterilite containers from HD or Lowes. They are cheap and foodsafe.

 

[cr500_af]

slayers911;469654 wrote: Is there any reason to hold on to the very salty water that I take out of the tank for future top offs?

Since nobody has said it, do NOT use salt water for topping off (unless you have a very specific reason to do so, like slowly raising your SG).

Evaporation leaves the salt in the tank. If you top off with saltwater you will raise your SG every time you do so.

 

[lilrobb]

Tony_Caliente;469663 wrote: It would also be a good idea to try use RODI water at 8.2 or so ph..

You won't get RODI without any buffers or supplementation to read that pH.
RODI has a natural pH of 7 (neutral), but most of our pH probes will read other values due to the low ionic content in there - making it hard to measure the pH.

 

[tony_caliente]

I place crushed coral (in a media sock) in my RODI water buckets to buffer it. Is that bad? I also have unbuffered RODI water stored.

 

[lilrobb]

Not sure what the coral would do in there, pH 7 is neutral - won't buffer anything. Liquid add ons on the other hand could change something