yarrumretep
03/20/2006, 07:43 PM
This is the first major incident I've had in my 2 years of reefkeeping. I'd greatly appreciate any input from experience folks on how to best recover.
I was out of town for a long weekend - during that time there were a couple of scheduled visits to feed and check on things. Apparently during the second visit, the skimmer (which was cleaned) was left leaning against the side of the sump, thus slowly exporting the water from it's exhaust gradually to my floor.
While this was happening my auto-top-off was working hard to keep up with the perceived higher evaporation rate - importing fresh RO/DI water. Thus, when I arrived home, the specific gravity of my water was down to 1.014 (or a little below that, even).
I have a 72G tank with a 20G (a bit less) sump.
The swimming critters all seem OK (ate when fed and are swimming actively)- but all corals / anenomae are completely retracted and my two tough-as-nails sea-stars appear to be in tough shape (lying limp not responding to light - but they do react to a poke).
So far, I've mixed a batch (5g) of slightly extra salty water (~1.028) and gotten the tank back to it's operating level of water. I'm currently adding salt directly to the sump in small doses to gradually increase the overall SG - it's now up to 1.016.
1) Is this the appropriate protocol to gradually bring the salinity back up? How slowly should I proceed with adding the salt?
2) Is there something additional I shoudl be doing to try to ease this trauma on my critters?
Any advice or perspective would be greatly appreciated.
-pete
I was out of town for a long weekend - during that time there were a couple of scheduled visits to feed and check on things. Apparently during the second visit, the skimmer (which was cleaned) was left leaning against the side of the sump, thus slowly exporting the water from it's exhaust gradually to my floor.
While this was happening my auto-top-off was working hard to keep up with the perceived higher evaporation rate - importing fresh RO/DI water. Thus, when I arrived home, the specific gravity of my water was down to 1.014 (or a little below that, even).
I have a 72G tank with a 20G (a bit less) sump.
The swimming critters all seem OK (ate when fed and are swimming actively)- but all corals / anenomae are completely retracted and my two tough-as-nails sea-stars appear to be in tough shape (lying limp not responding to light - but they do react to a poke).
So far, I've mixed a batch (5g) of slightly extra salty water (~1.028) and gotten the tank back to it's operating level of water. I'm currently adding salt directly to the sump in small doses to gradually increase the overall SG - it's now up to 1.016.
1) Is this the appropriate protocol to gradually bring the salinity back up? How slowly should I proceed with adding the salt?
2) Is there something additional I shoudl be doing to try to ease this trauma on my critters?
Any advice or perspective would be greatly appreciated.
-pete