hugh newbie mistake

donk18

donk18

AC Members
Oct 6, 2007
183
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Blacklick, Ohio
i was breaking down my tank to give it a good cleaning due to all the algea i have been haveing a problem with. so i checked the sg in the tank. it was 1.042. i can't believe i have anything alive still with that sg. i normally didn't check my sg in my main tank just in my sw mixture. i now know better. so right now i have everything in a 15 gallon rubbermaid until i get my main tank back to the proper levels. i can't believe i did this. i feel like such a idiot. go ahead and bash away everyone.
 
Wow! That is a bit high! No bashing from me, I've made my share of mistakes too! Any guess how it happened, though? I mean, if you started with a normal SG and have been only adding water that's within normal range, I guess I don't see how it could have gone unusually high, unless you've been topping off with saltwater, or you've let it evaporate a LOT!

Was your reading taken with a refractometer or hydrometer? If a hydrometer, did you take several readings in case the first one was off?

Good thing you caught it. Best of luck in the future!
 
it was a little of topping off with sw and letting it evaporate to much. i was out of town for four days and lit evaporated alot then i topped off with sw. i know where i went wrong now but it really sucks because i lost all my coral. except for my button polyps. they look like they may have some life in them still. that is what really sucks.
 
Well its a lesson that you have learned and hopefully things will survive. The best thing would be to lower it over the course of several days however. With your specific gravity being so high I would also suspect that other things may be out of whack and it won't be good to put the fish through even more stress doing a quick reduction of your salinity.
 
I am glad you posted ,being a newbie i would like to learn from others .
i did top off with salt water thinking it was just water ,we are just over .
but nothing is in the tank,we got lucky .
sorry for you loss.

gl
90gl started last week
 
I got that book. it is very good. You know I never knew anything about cyanide. That is nuts but there is some much in that book it's was a great read. I learned allot from it.
 
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