Salt water at elevation?

Beaner3

Beaner3

New member
Quick question for anyone interested,

We are planning a move to Leadville soon, from MN, anyone in the higher altitudes have any problems with keeping salty critters? Does the thinner O2 content in the air negatively impact your ORP at all? Do you have problems with your skimmers at all? I have a 180 set up right now but will be downsizing to a 165 when we move. I have a buddy who will be making me a bunch of water for when we get there, does it take any more or less salt to achieve SG? Sorry about all the questions, but thanks in advance for answering.
 
Welcome to Colorado!

There are many folks that successfully keep aquariums and reef tanks around 8000 ft. Leadville is sitting at about 10,000 ft. There shouldn't be a significant difference between the two. Most folks living here in Colorado fall between the 6000 - 8000 ft level and there are some truly stunning tanks here.

Altitude effects dissolved gasses, which means that saturation is reached a a lower limit than at sea level. So your tank will have lower O2 content. SG is not effected. Effects on ORP should be negligible, unless you working on a thesis. :)

Skimmers work normally..... you will have to adjust your settings slightly for air/water flow, but otherwise you won't see much of a difference.

If you are keeping a fish only tank, one way to help offset that level of O2 in the water s to lower your salinity. The lower the salinity, the higher the saturation point of gasses. This typically isn't an issue, but it is something you can play with. Amazingly, critters do well up here.

-Rob
 
Thanks Mougey, I will probably just do a FOWLR set-up to start with, until I get comfortable with the difference in elevation and how it will effect my parameters. Where you said a lower SG, do mean around 1.020-1.023, or closer to hypo salinity SG? Thanks again!
 
If you are doing fish only, you might as well be running 1.017 - 1.020.... easier on the fish, generally. Hypo would be down around 1.010 or so.... good for QT, but may or may not be good long term (years).

-Rob
 
WELCOME TO COLORADO, i've never seen any problems with tanks in the mountains, my buddy ryan lives in Breck and he
 
sorry, and his LFS is aqua mart in lakewood. he travels back into summit w/ no problem, be sure the bag is not sealed. enjoy Leadville! and i'll see you in Vail......
 
Hey SAZAMA, why do you say not to seal the bags? Explosions?

When we move, I plan on lining some of our coolers with polybags, and running a battery powered air pump for the drive. Do you see any problem with that? The coral is all gone (that stuff is easy to give away!) but we are bringing our beloved Moo the cowfish with us, along with some of the other critters currently housed in our tank. Can't wait to get out there!
 
If you seal the bags tightly, you run the risk of bursting them or getting leaks as you cross the passes at altitude. Sealing the bags loosely, leaving room for the air to expand will help prevent that.

If you are just going to use a battery powered air pump, leaving the containers open, don't forget about a small heat source. It may be hot in the midwest, but will be cold if you are driving at night into the mountains. Well.... cold for the fish.

Bring some frozen bottles of water and or some heat packs to help control the temps should you need to stop for a while on your trip.

-Rob
 
We made it! Only lost 1 little turbo snail, can't believe it. Major die off on my live rock though, ammonia is crazy high, doing water changes every day to compensate. Rmougey, thanks for the salinity tip,....seems to be working well. Leadville city water supply is sitting around 110 ppm of TDS, so making 165 gallons of RO has taken some time, but well worth it to start off right, thanks all for the tips, look forward to maybe attending a meeting soon.
 
I always suggest a power inverter, air pump and heater. Get caught in bad weather or traffic and it can take a while to get home.
 
Drink lots of water. Don't drink alcohol till you are used to it. Smoking will make adjustment more difficult as well.
 
This has been discussed in our club. I read articles posted that disolved O2 is no less at altitude. Yes there is less air, but still plenty to to maintain the same DO levels in salt water.

Also, I have done some testing and others seem to come to the same conclusion. I would be interested in what you have found. With less air, it effects air draw on skimmers. Several folks have show their air draw is about 20% less compared to sea level claims. I went through a whole slew of solutions to a skimmer I bought that I thought was not working right. Bottom line, after the manufacturer basically sent me a proven one from his shop, it was 20% less for me. Everyone else gets the same as the manufacturer.

I would be curious if you found anything different with your skimmer.
 
I've had my tank up and running for about 12 days now, I also put a different skimmer in my sump than the one I had in it back in MN. I was running a Nautilus TE (dont ever get one, they are horrid) but had an extra Turbofloater 1000 in the shop. So now the Turbofloater is skimming the aquarium, and since you mentioned it, I do notice a little less skimmate being produced, but the stuff that is being collected is a dark, thick almost gooey liquid. Back in MN (at 1,400 ft) I was using the same skimmer on a tub of LR I was cycling for some clients, and the skimmate wasn't nearly as dark, and I had the thing dialed way down on the outflow, to try and produce that dark stuff. But the water volume I am skimming now is a little bit more than what I had going on back there.

Interesting Powerman,....I will be keeping my eyes on that as things progress here.
 
It's an interesting discussion. Oxygen saturation levels depend on many factors.
- As temperature increases, dissolved O2 falls (% saturation is lower)
- As pressure decreases, dissolved O2 falls
- As salinity increases, dissolved O2 falls
- As altitude increases, dissolved O2 falls
- As flow increases, dissolved O2 increases

Tanks are always saturated (we hope), it's just that saturation occurs at a lower level. You can only dissolve so much gas in a solution, given the variables listed above. That means that there is less O2 available in a given sample (same reason folks breath harder at altitude, they need more air to get the same level of O2 that was available at sea level). Mind you it's still present at the same rate, ~21%, it's just that there is less of everything.

We can help mitigate the effects by reducing salinity, lowering temp and attempting to supersaturate the water (skimming, Ozone, heavy circulation). Is it something to worry about? Most likely no, most animals adapt. But it does mean that we need to be aware of this when stocking and understand how summer temps can impact a tanks inhabitants more quickly here.

A couple of interesting URLs for reference. One includes an altitude calculator.

http://bcn.boulder.co.us/basin/data/BACT/info/DO.html

Calculator is here:
http://www.fivecreeks.org/monitor/do.html

There are some interesting, yet complicated spreadsheets that can be found through a google search that take salinity into consideration as well.

-Rob
 
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