Top Off Water Looks Strange

[Patrick Cox]

I noticed something odd today. My tank was getting low so I turned on my RODI unit to fill up one of my regular 5 gallon buckets with a gallon or two of fresh RODI water to poor in and when I poored the water into the tank, it almost appeared to have some texture to it. It was king of like mixing alchohol with water where it appeared to have some ripples to the water. Then once it mixed up it went away. When I first poored the water in, my clowns came over to see what was going on and they started to act a bit strange. Almost like there were stunned for a moment. Here are a few thoughts and questions on this. Thanks for any comments...

NOTE: The water I poored in was fresh RODI water that had not been heated nor mixed with any salt. It was just straight out of the system into a bucket and then into the tank.

Questions -

1. Could either fresh water being poored into salt water or water of a different temperature cause this?

2. Before I filled the bucket I noticed a residue at the bottom of the bucket so I used an algae pad to scrape the bottom. It appeared to be salt residue but I thought I got it cleaned up.

3. I am using plastic buckets from a paint store. Will salt water degrade these buckets and cause plastic to leach into the water?

4. Any other thoughts?

I do know that once I get my sump I will add top off water to the sump but that will be a few weeks.

THanks for your input.

Pat

[Ocean Mang]

I see this all the time when I add. maybe it has something to do with water surface tension.

Joel

"It starts stopping when it stops stopping", Ben Kweller

[bertoni]

I suspect the fish was just a bit surprised by the low temperature or low salinity of the topoff. It's not a problem, IME, as long as the topoff amount is not too large relative to the tank size.

[seapug]

What you're seeing is the visible thermocline and halocline (temperature and density variations) between the warm saltwater and cool freshwater.

[Dustin1300]

I'd agree with seapug. It will be fine and I've noticed this in past when I manually added top off. Now my top off and water changes are automated through my LMII so they work near perfectly so I can view tank more and do other maintenance;)

[Patrick Cox]

Sounds good. Thanks all.

[allsps40]

What you are seeing is normal. The sat water is more dense that the fresh water so the stay separated for a little while. Having different densities they refract light differently. This is what you are seeing.