Salt Creep

[PoukieBear]

Last weekend, My boyfriend was over to my place for a visit. He's also into reef keeping.

He took one look at my tank and sump, and started chipping off the salt creep, back into the tank.

I FREAKED ON HIM ! ! ! I told him that he's NOT supposed to do that !

He just looked at me and said, "Well why not?"

My ex, who got me into reefing, told me never ever to put the salt creep back into the tank. I have no idea why. I just trusted him, and assumed that he knew what he was talking about, and I never questioned to him as to why.

So, what do you do with your salt creep? Do you leave it alone? Do you pick it off and throw it away? Or do you chip it back into your tank?

 

[Ismellikefish]

I keep up on mine so it is just a tiny bit that goes back in the tank, been doing that for almost a year.

Too much could cause a spike in salinity I suppose.

Other than that I have no other idea if something negative happens.

 

[rbursek]

What do you think, it is salt, it will raise your SG if you put it back in.

 

[JKDMan]

i throw mine away, if u put it back into your tank it will raise your waters salinity. dont put it back in the tank IMO

 

[PoukieBear]

I don't put it back into the tank for the salinity reason. That's the obvious reason.

I just wasn't sure if there was another, more harmful reason not to put it back in.

 

[bdblkta]

you do not want to put the salt back into the tank due to the fact that salt can/will burn and possibly kill most corals if it were to fall onto them undisolved.

 

[otiso777]

You need to put it back in in order to keep the salinity constant. Salt creep is just salt that has come out of solution or has been left behind when water evaporates. If you just throw it out, then the salinity in the tank will drop. Put it back somewhere where it will dissolve before it touches any coral.

 

[rbursek]

Otiso,
I disaree, creep is so slw that adjustments to SG with MU and water changes copensate for it. So if my SG runs 1.026 and today I decide to clean my creep and put it in the tank, then what?

 

[otiso777]

Scrape it off weekly instead of waiting for it to built up to large amounts of salt. Either way you go, it's not going to matter much. The small quantity of salt isn't going to make much of a difference in the salinity of the system. BTW, what's MU?

 

[Toddrtrex]

What ever you do, be careful where it ends up. I had a big piece of salt creep fall into my tank, right onto an anemone --- no more anemone.

 

[AquaReeferMan]

I will sometimes knock small pieces back into my sump but never into my display. Like stated above if any undissolved salt hits the tissue of coral or anemones its detrimental. Not to mention if a fish thinks its food thats even worse.

 

[rbursek]

Depends on the size of the system.