tank crashed lost salt in water

[phantomfisher]

Can someone help explain what happened... my tank lost almost all salt in the water and everything except my hermits died within an hour or two. My tank does not have a skimmer just a power filter what could cause this within a couple days time? any help would be appriciated... all other stats test ok... was going to do a 20% water change today... guess i dont' need too now

 

[Anonymous]

What is the source of freshwater? Do you have automatic top off?

There is no way for salt to disappear. It is either got diluted from freshwater added to the tank, or with the use of a heavy duty deionization resin that absorb the salt.

 

[Anonymous]

Weird. This is the second episode of this I've heard of, the first being Eric Borneman's reef. Some strange phenomenon of the salt falling out of suspension?

 

[Anonymous]

>...Some strange phenomenon of the salt falling out of suspension?


You can get the salt to fall out, but unlike calcium, the Na and Cl in salt water is no where near the saturation concentration, and it is very difficult (aka impossible) to get this done.


If that can happened, the Sandis would love to pay you 700 billion barrels of cruel oil for the trick.

 

[Anonymous]

>...Some strange phenomenon of the salt falling out of suspension?


You can get the salt to fall out, but unlike calcium, the Na and Cl in salt water is no where near the saturation concentration, and it is very difficult (aka impossible) to get this done.


If that can happened, the Sandis would love to pay you 700 billion barrels of cruel oil for the trick.

Hmmm, when I was a newbie in marine tanks, I had a ton of buffer precipitate out of solution in my tank. I was adding buffer (per misunderstood fish store guy instructions of adding a tablespoon per day), and suddenly, it was "snowing" in my tank! I was just wondering if the salt would do that, too, under some circumstances.

 

[phantomfisher]

I don't have an automatic top-off I do everything manually... there isn't any salt build-up anywhere either... salt levels were find over the weekend still at 28 but today the level is 5 still any info would be helpful...

 

[Anonymous]

Uh, no clue except who else has acess to the tank, and how did you verify your SG? A swing arm hydrometer or what?

 

[Meloco14]

Have you double checked the salinity to make sure it really is at 5?

 

[Anonymous]

>...Some strange phenomenon of the salt falling out of suspension?


You can get the salt to fall out, but unlike calcium, the Na and Cl in salt water is no where near the saturation concentration, and it is very difficult (aka impossible) to get this done.


If that can happened, the Sandis would love to pay you 700 billion barrels of cruel oil for the trick.

Hmmm, when I was a newbie in marine tanks, I had a ton of buffer precipitate out of solution in my tank. I was adding buffer (per misunderstood fish store guy instructions of adding a tablespoon per day), and suddenly, it was "snowing" in my tank! I was just wondering if the salt would do that, too, under some circumstances.

The "snow" you see is mostly carbonate and calcium that is pretty much supersaturated in both natural seawater and properly mixed saltwater. No matter how hard you tried to precipitate thing out, the specific gravity is still very close to 35ppt.

The sodium and chlorine in there is pretty much impossible to get rid off without the use of ion exchange resin or other ultrafiltration method such as zeolite, RO membrane and the likes.