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Beginner tips

Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 7:23 pm
by P4RKY
I finally got myself a figure 8 yesterday , I plan to switch over to brackish when I'm back from my hols in September . However I'm confused at how I do this .
I know I need marine salt , hydrometer or refractometer , spare bucket . My question is so I need to do this slowly 1.001 then 1.002 and so on . How do I achieve this ? And then how do I maintain this when I carry on doing water changes when I achieve the desired salinity ? My maths isn't great and I'm stressing myself out , please can you dumb it down for me in a step by step ?
Thanks so much

Re: Beginner tips

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 6:34 am
by Iliveinazoo
You'll get the hang of it in no time. Have a look at this topic:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19348

If you stick to 50% water changes it makes the maths more simple. Even easier if you look at the list by Dadof4 on the 6th post down in the topic.

The post recommends having a large container so you can mix all in one batch but you can make up multiple batches if you want to as long as they add up to 50% of the total volume of your tank. So say you have a 100 litre aquarium and a 10 litre bucket then 5 buckets at SG1.002 is the same as one 50 litre bucket at SG1.002.

When you do water changes bear in mind that the salt does not evaporate - only the water so if some of the water has evaporated then the salinity will have increased since the last time you checked. Before a water change re-check the salinity of the tanks and carry out the change as described above, if you want to keep the salinity the same as the tank water then just make up the new water to match the tank water.

There is no advantage in waiting to turn the water brackish, if you have naturally soft water then I would recommend turning brackish at your earliest opportunity.

Re: Beginner tips

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 8:22 am
by Pufferpunk
The only reason you might wait if if the tank has recently become stable. You don't want to stress the bacteria until the parameters have been 0 ammonia/nitrite & nitrate <20, for at least a month.