Help with raising sg?

[dashielle89]

So I'm new to saltwater and just set up a 65 gallon recently. I let it cycle for about 2 months with 50 lbs of live rock and sand. My sg was at 1.020, and I knew that was a bit low, especially if I wanted corals later on, but I figured I would just add a few hardy fish first and I could raise it slowly over time.

After the 2 months I went out and got about 30 more lbs of live rock. A couple days later I noticed there were 2 very tiny aiptasia on the new rock, which I obviously hadn't seen when I bought it. Even though I new they needed a higher sg, I decided to buy 3 peppermint shrimp because I heard how fast the aiptasia can take over, and within a few hour they had eaten it.

I was doing about 10% weekly water changes with sg of about 1.024 and trying to top off with saltwater to get the sg up without raising it too fast (I have under 1 gallon of evaporation a week right now since I don't have very strong lighting). Well after about a week and a half it didn't seem the sg changed at all, then one of the peppermints died. I assume that's the reason since the water is perfect besides that.

So now for the past few days I have been doing water changes every day of about 1-2 gallons with a bit higher sg of about 1.027. It still doesn't seem like its changing much at all. I don't want to raise it too fast and kill everything, but I don't want to kill them from it being too low either. So could someone help me out with the best way to go about this?

The only other things in the tank are hitchhikers: 1 mushroom, 1 snail, 4-5 brittle stars, 1 pink oba, and 2 asterina stars. They all seem to be doing fine.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Ron Reefman]

Adding a gallon or 2 or even 5 to a 65g system at an SG of 1.027 will take forever to raise your system SG much. Do a water change of 2 gallons with an SG of 1.05. If that doesn't have any affect within an hour, do 1.08 or even higher. I hope you have a sump and can add the new water in the sump and not directly into the DT. If you do have to add it into the DT, do it slowly (over 15-30 minutes). Some where on RC there may even be a calculator that could help tell you how many gallons to add at what SG to get the effect you want. Moving SG from 1.020 to 1.025 in a day or 2 shouldn't stress any of your animals in my opinion.

[yubunski]

with a 2 gallon water change at 1.027 you are only going to be raising the salinity by 2*(1.027-1.020)/60 which is going to be 0.00023 per water change, which might take a while to get it up to 1.026. Try to do 4 gallon waterchange with 1.036 sg water. Put the water in SLOWLY (Over an hour) sand in high flow ara. This should raise it roughly by 0.001 per water change which should be safe if you do 1 water change a day.

Good Luck

[yubunski]

or what Ron saids.....must've been typing in the same time.