Salt concerns

[bc-matty]

Hey there guys! I am having a strange dilema with my salt gravity in my tank. Here is the scoop... less than a week ago I set up my tank. Added the sand and filtre. I then measured out the salt into the water and let it be for a day. When I measured the gravity it was at 1.023. The next day it was up to 1.025 and then today I almost passed out cause it was at 1.027!

I have done nothing with the tank. I am think one of a few things could be wrong.

I am using Kent salt. The didn't give me specific directions into measuring the salt. The petstore said 1 cup for every 2 gallons. My tank is 30g so I put in only 12 cups. They said start with less. Is this off?

The only other thing I can think off is some salt was not yet dissolved in my tank and slowly did over the next days, or my filtre (fluval 304) is messing with my gravity? I am confused as to what is going on. My tank temp is at 82 and that is with out the heater on.

What I did was remove some water, and added fresh water to help balance it out. Is there a no miss way of making salt water. Now I am scared that when I add my new salt water when doing water changes my gravity will go up two days later.

Help please!

 

[Anonymous]

Your sg will go up as water evaporates from the tank. If you keep it topped off, you will not have this problem.
For now, do what you are doing and bring the sg down to 1.026 by changing saltwater with fresh.
1.027 is not dangerous BTW. The red sea has a sg of 1.028 from what i remember.

 

[LX302]

Iceman's right about the top off, but what concerns me is the way you described the order of events of adding the salt.
So to clarify, did you add the water, sand and filter, and then added the salt to the water?
If you did, I can see why you had this problem. The salt mixed into the sand, and you have some extra that did dissolve immediately, dissolving later, hence raising your SG.
Keep your eye on this the next couple of days.
In the future, mix your saltwater in a seperate container, (5gal bucket etc.) throw a powerhead and heater into the bucket to mix the salt and water for a least a day before using. This will let the salt thoughly mix together to give the SQ and PH to stabilize.

If you didn't just add salt to the tank, taking a reading with a swing arm hydrometer will give you different readings as well.. I always do three seperate tests to make sure I got the right reading. But got tired of that and purchase a refractometer to read my SG.