heating water for water change

[lesley]

I am doing my first water change on a marine algae tank that i sort of unwillingly inherited. I let the salt dissolve over night, but i have no spare heater. is it okay to heat some of the water (on a hotplate) and add it to the rest of the bucket to bring it to temp?

[mogurnda]

Yep. I used to just put some RO water in a glass bowl in the microwave. Just remember to measure specific gravity when it gets to the right temperature.

[lesley]

Cool. Thanks. This tank is actually pretty neglected. The lady who had it previously didn't even have any sort of salinity measuring device and supposedly just "measured according to what was on the package". I don't know how that worked.

My salinity is really high right now because of evaporation, and I think I will do this water change to match the current salinity and then slowly add fresh water over the next few days.

So far the algae seems to be doing okay as well as the few snails and star polyps. I probably won't add anything until we move to the new building in December. Strictly maintenance and figuring out what I am doing for now.

[mogurnda]

Changing the salinity slowly is probably a really good idea. Especially with snails, rapid changes are supposedly really harmful.