wpeterson
Well-Known Member
I do my best to publish all my major reefing mistakes and disasters in the club for other folks to learn from. We've been lucky to have good results with our new 90 gallon tank that it's been a long time since I've made a post like this.
I did a 25 gallon water change on our tank yesterday, but the salinity was way too low. I had accumulated dried salt on the top lid of my refractometer sample lid, so that it read 1.025 when in reality the sample was much lower. I noticed that the water change water had a different index of refraction when I was pumping it in, but thought it was just the heat difference (I prep water change water at ~ 80 degrees, when the tank is ~ 78 - to account for heat loss during pumping and heater/flow being turned off in transit). After I completed the water change I measured the tank salinity to see it had dropped to 1.022 from 1.025.
Because this had just happened, advice I read online suggested raising the salinity back up immediately could prevent as much trauma to the tank so I brought the salinity back up to 1.024 over the next hour and hoped as this water evaporated over the next 24 hours it would rise to 1.025.
None of the fish, snails, SPS, or LPS in the tank seemed to show any signs of trauma. Our Rose BTA reacted negatively when the salinity initially dropped but had bubbled back up to normal when it was returned to a more normal level.
Unfortunately, the rapid drop and rise in salinity hit our Tuxedo urchin hard and I don't know if he will survive. I feel terrible. I should have removed it from the tank when the initial salinity drop happened and then drip acclimated it after raising the tank salinity back up over 2-3 hours.
I feel terrible that my careless has probably killed an animal in our tank.
I am careful to clean the inner sample surface on the refractometer, but I'm resolved to clean the entire sample lid and re-calibrate it more frequently. A warning to other folks that you can correct salinity mistakes like this quickly enough to avoid stressing out some animal and corals, but you need to think about sensitive inverts. I fear this may have injured some of our trochus and astrea snails as well.
I did a 25 gallon water change on our tank yesterday, but the salinity was way too low. I had accumulated dried salt on the top lid of my refractometer sample lid, so that it read 1.025 when in reality the sample was much lower. I noticed that the water change water had a different index of refraction when I was pumping it in, but thought it was just the heat difference (I prep water change water at ~ 80 degrees, when the tank is ~ 78 - to account for heat loss during pumping and heater/flow being turned off in transit). After I completed the water change I measured the tank salinity to see it had dropped to 1.022 from 1.025.
Because this had just happened, advice I read online suggested raising the salinity back up immediately could prevent as much trauma to the tank so I brought the salinity back up to 1.024 over the next hour and hoped as this water evaporated over the next 24 hours it would rise to 1.025.
None of the fish, snails, SPS, or LPS in the tank seemed to show any signs of trauma. Our Rose BTA reacted negatively when the salinity initially dropped but had bubbled back up to normal when it was returned to a more normal level.
Unfortunately, the rapid drop and rise in salinity hit our Tuxedo urchin hard and I don't know if he will survive. I feel terrible. I should have removed it from the tank when the initial salinity drop happened and then drip acclimated it after raising the tank salinity back up over 2-3 hours.
I feel terrible that my careless has probably killed an animal in our tank.
I am careful to clean the inner sample surface on the refractometer, but I'm resolved to clean the entire sample lid and re-calibrate it more frequently. A warning to other folks that you can correct salinity mistakes like this quickly enough to avoid stressing out some animal and corals, but you need to think about sensitive inverts. I fear this may have injured some of our trochus and astrea snails as well.
