metal halides?

[twisted]

I think it would cause greater stress for keeping up with toping off!!!!

I think alot of people here use automatic top offs. I dont since I only need to top off a gallon every few days

Brian

thats what i was getting at...if you are evaporating alot of water you would be topping off quite a bit....so a pre balanced resorvoir would be needed to keep salt levels from spiking? with my t5s i only drop about a quarter inch a day..with mh, i would guess it would be close to 2 inches....so does using halide really benefit the tank to make the investment of auto filling worth it?

 

[ccCapt]

...if you are evaporating alot of water you would be topping off quite a bit....so a pre balanced resorvoir would be needed to keep salt levels from spiking?

Not sure what you mean by pre-balanced, but when the water evaporates, the salt stays. Your top off resevoir is for fresh water only. As water evaporates, your salinity starts to rise so adding freshwater keeps the salinity stable.

 

[twisted]

Not sure what you mean by pre-balanced, but when the water evaporates, the salt stays. Your top off resevoir is for fresh water only. As water evaporates, your salinity starts to rise so adding freshwater keeps the salinity stable.

by pre-balanced i meant properly ph'd and alk adjusted....the rest of your answer is part of my question...i understand salt staying, thus a "spike" in the salinity..so if you use a mh light, the evaporation rate is going to be much higher and the salinity rise increases much more than if t5s were used...thus creating a more stressfull environment in the aquarium, unless a pre-balanced resevoir of fresh is used....so, my question is- are halides worth the risks of the results of a higher evap rate? i know it is kinda a trivial question, but im a little compulsive and want what is the all around best for my tank.....

 

[Wes888]

For some reason I don't have as much water lost like others. I-2 gal a day the most.

 

[ccCapt]

by pre-balanced i meant properly ph'd and alk adjusted....

Don't do anything to the fresh water. Use RO/DI water with nothing added. Don't add any kind of buffers as they will affect the parameters in your tank. Only pure water evaporates so only add pure water.

As far as stress from salinity swings, maybe your looking too deep for problems that usually don't happen. Just top off every day. If you have a 30g tank and need to top off a quart/day, that's not a problem. Before I setup my auto top off for my 125, I would add about 1 gal in the AM and 1 gal in the PM in the cool months and in the summer with the fans going and/or AC going, it would be up to 2 gal or more each time. I never had problems.

Your missing something on the T5HO heat vs MH heat. If you have 250 watts of T5HO's over your tank, they give off the same amount of heat as a 250w MH. The difference being the heat is spread out over the entire lenght of the T5 bulb where it's all concentrated at the bulb in a MH. T5's need fans just like MH's. Depending on the setup, some people have more heat issues using T5HO's than using MH.

 

[twisted]

Don't do anything to the fresh water. Use RO/DI water with nothing added. Don't add any kind of buffers as they will affect the parameters in your tank. Only pure water evaporates so only add pure water.

As far as stress from salinity swings, maybe your looking too deep for problems that usually don't happen. Just top off every day. If you have a 30g tank and need to top off a quart/day, that's not a problem. Before I setup my auto top off for my 125, I would add about 1 gal in the AM and 1 gal in the PM in the cool months and in the summer with the fans going and/or AC going, it would be up to 2 gal or more each time. I never had problems.

Your missing something on the T5HO heat vs MH heat. If you have 250 watts of T5HO's over your tank, they give off the same amount of heat as a 250w MH. The difference being the heat is spread out over the entire lenght of the T5 bulb where it's all concentrated at the bulb in a MH. T5's need fans just like MH's. Depending on the setup, some people have more heat issues using T5HO's than using MH.

thats what i needed! thankyou! thats where i was confused...just straight ro...i guess my heat issue is taken care of from the ceiling fans in the living room..plenty of air flow...so, should the water during a weekly water change be adjusted other than salinitly before it goes into the tank?

 

[ccCapt]

For the most part, no. Get the salinity and temp matched and your good to go.

In the future, if you get into hard corals you will be more mindful of your alk and calcium levels. Depending on what salt you use, you may or may not have to supplement it to bring up the levels. For example, Instant Ocean is a little low in calcium and magnesium so I supplement my fresh mix with both to bring the levels up.

 

[twisted]

For the most part, no. Get the salinity and temp matched and your good to go.

In the future, if you get into hard corals you will be more mindful of your alk and calcium levels. Depending on what salt you use, you may or may not have to supplement it to bring up the levels. For example, Instant Ocean is a little low in calcium and magnesium so I supplement my fresh mix with both to bring the levels up.

thanks so much for the answers...sorry for highjackin a page of the thread...i do make sure that my replacement water is matching in ca and alk...where ive been going wrong is adjusting my top off...ive only done this for about a week fortunately...before i started this my tank was crystal....for the past few days its been a little cloudy and 0 on trates trites....only thing changed is my alk has been higher than normal...anyway, thanks again...really glad i found this forum...