New Water Change Method?

P.S. Once you figure it out you could add it into your top-off water and premix it to drip in

 

Sounds like a cool method but you will need to add about 4 shot glasses of salt with that gallon of water. Trust me I live in Germany now and everything is done in liters. All of my old water change buckets were in liters so I started experimenting with how to mix the water for changes. I found that if I put about one shot glass of per liter of water I would be realy close to my target of 1.026. Still do it but with a much larger quantity of water. As stated it is always fairly close. That teaspoon per gallon won't cut it unless you have soem kind of super salt.

 

i thought about starting new thread for this question, However it kind of fitts in sparky's thread. Question one. When I do a water change my acropora comes out of water, I have not attached it yet so I move it lower in tank. I see a lot of tanks that this is not possible.I also have seen thousands of them out in the air during high tide in the ocean. Will they be ok for a 15 to 30 min wc? Question 2 More to this thread. I was wondering about having a refugium that is equal to or even bigger then display tank at a level equal to or even above level of display tank. Then make wc out of refugium. Yes you would lose a lot of critters out of fuge but display tank level would stay full.Any thoughts on this?

 

Robman, good question. But losing water to evaporation is losing just that--water. When a 90 gallon tank loses a gallon per day due to evaporation; and that water is replaced via a float valve att'd to RO/DI water, the evaporation/replenishment has no effect on water chemistry.

Draining a gallon of water per day has the net effect of diluting the water when the water is replaced.

See the difference?

 

In my scenario there is no topoff water. I use a float valve and topoff is automated.

This is why for now, I add salt manually. I pour the dry salt into the corner overflow of my drilled display tank. I think it collects on the bottom and slowly dissolves. It works well from what I can tell.

 

Cool idea where to add the salt--Yes I understood the difference, just wanted to make sure we were on the same page!

 

Another update. I've stuck to the program, as it were; and just the experience has left me understanding a bit more about my livestock.

I got some more xenia from Wally and they are doing wonderfully. I've learned that xenia are quite tempermental with respect to alkalinity.

I'm getting closer to knowing exactly what my depletion levels are for salt, alk, cal, and mag. Once I get everything dialed in, I'll add each item on a different day.

The main goal is to drain one gallon of tank water a day, and replace it with the 4 components mentioned above in such a way that levels are maintained at ideal, while neither falling nor rising.