Salt water "Shelf Life"
- Thread starter Cateye
- Start date
physicslord
New member
I think it must be infinity.
TheBimbo
Member
This is a good question, so I'm tagging along... We run our water about 2 days ahead of time and add the salt, pump and the heater... Sometimes we get busy and then don't have time to change it for about another 2-3 days and I noticed that there is sometimes a sort of slimyness on the inside of the garbage can and on the wires for the heater and the pump we use in there...
TheBimbo...
TheBimbo...
CW from the OC
New member
I forgot I had a rubbermaid brute on wheels filled with IO saltwater in the garage for......3 years.
I'm not kidding, ROFL.
Anyway, I put it in my reef and everything seemed fine. Of course at that time it was pretty much just shrooms and a tang, so who really knows....
I'm not kidding, ROFL.
Anyway, I put it in my reef and everything seemed fine. Of course at that time it was pretty much just shrooms and a tang, so who really knows....
Craig Lambert
Premium Member
Why would you need to keep it circulating if it was thoroughly mixed when made?
TheBimbo
Member
We've just always done this, I would think that it would be better for it to be circulating than to be sitting still... The hubby also made us a "salt mixer" with a piece of leftover plexi and pvc pipe... he drilled holes in the plexi and a slit up through the pvc , and then we basically tied it to the pvc pipe, and that's what I use to stir/mix up the water...
TheBimbo...
TheBimbo...
physicslord
New member
The way I would approach this is to ask the question: What is there to break down? Salt? Have you ever had table salt go bad?
Water? Water can't fowl unless it has something in it that is alive and dies. There shouldn't be too many live things in RODI water.
Saltwater is just water with salt dissolved in it so how could it go bad?
That's what I think. If there's more to the problem let me know.
sliminess sounds like electrolyte, and that would just be concentrated saltwater. It's probably a result of some evaportation over time.
Water? Water can't fowl unless it has something in it that is alive and dies. There shouldn't be too many live things in RODI water.
Saltwater is just water with salt dissolved in it so how could it go bad?
That's what I think. If there's more to the problem let me know.
sliminess sounds like electrolyte, and that would just be concentrated saltwater. It's probably a result of some evaportation over time.
The_Nexis_One
New member
The slimyness is bacteria and micro algae from the air. Particles settle continuously on the waters surface delivering different strains.
Bacteria feed on the contaminents and chemical nutrients. They can even feed on toxic chemicals and base elements like Iron in the water, not just dead organics. Their growth, death, and compound conversions feed algae and other bacteria.
So... in a sense, the water can go bad, by overgrowth/bloom of unwanted bacteria or by compound depletion due to bacterial feeding. But you are intending it to be used in a bacterial/algal soup we call "our tanks"... So, unless they eat "the good stuff" out of our water, or if we are doing very large water changes, it shouldn't be a problem IMHO.
I'm not a biologist, physicist, hortoculturist, nor do I spell well....
But that's my $0.02 from what I'v understood over the years.John.
TheBimbo
Member
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6947665#post6947665 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by The_Nexis_One
I'm not a biologist, physicist, hortoculturist, nor do I spell well....
John.
Thanks... Ummm, do you play one on TV??? :lol: Seriously thanks b/c I really wasn't sure about it, and we've already dumped cans out b/c we were unsure
... Already had the tank almost crash and dumping cans of water, well it was a way better option...TheBimbo...
The_Nexis_One
New member
Yeah, I've dumped my extra out too, guess I'm a little anal about it. I usually mix what I need and let it go with a PH in it for a few hours until the salt is completely disolved, then I bring the temp up by tossing in a heater and finish off the Salinity 'fine tuning'.... I usually do the water change within a few hours of this... I've read 'both' that you are supposed to let the salt mix stabilize overnight AND that you can mix and dose the new water immediately... guess that puts me on the fence
That being said, when I setup my current system (~75g) I borrowed a water trailer from my LFS. They premixed it to 1.024 and as I was checking the water before I hauled it to my new home and started setting up the tanks, I realized that it smelled HORRIBLE. Upon closer inspection, it had chunks of algae and crud floating around in it and growing on the inside of the 500g container... Turns out that they had a week old 75 gallons of water and decided to just add new DI water on top and mix it back up to spec. The water had been sitting outside in the sun in a sealed 500g agri drum (large white drums you see on yard crew trucks) with no aeration or circulation for 6 full days... It was quite nasty.
Unfortunatly, I was in a bind and had tubs of coral, LiveRock, LiveSand, buckets of fish/eel sitting in my living room slowly getting colder/dryer... So I "had" to use the water. It was going to take them 2 days to make a new batch...
I setup a temp solution for the babies (my critters) in my living room, with air tubes, heaters, and powerheads running everywhere as I finished moving in. The water trailer was in my garage running through a commercial grade filter for 2 days before it stopped smelling like 'feet' and ammonia.
This is the water I used to setup my system.... and all is alive and well 8 months later (including the cyano, but I don't think that's the fault of the water)
Needless to say - I got the ~100 gallons of water I used for free and will know better than to rely on that LFS in the future.
(the previous is "NOT" the recommended proceedure for moving your system... just in case )
Best of luck,
John.
That being said, when I setup my current system (~75g) I borrowed a water trailer from my LFS. They premixed it to 1.024 and as I was checking the water before I hauled it to my new home and started setting up the tanks, I realized that it smelled HORRIBLE. Upon closer inspection, it had chunks of algae and crud floating around in it and growing on the inside of the 500g container... Turns out that they had a week old 75 gallons of water and decided to just add new DI water on top and mix it back up to spec. The water had been sitting outside in the sun in a sealed 500g agri drum (large white drums you see on yard crew trucks) with no aeration or circulation for 6 full days... It was quite nasty.
Unfortunatly, I was in a bind and had tubs of coral, LiveRock, LiveSand, buckets of fish/eel sitting in my living room slowly getting colder/dryer... So I "had" to use the water. It was going to take them 2 days to make a new batch...
I setup a temp solution for the babies (my critters) in my living room, with air tubes, heaters, and powerheads running everywhere as I finished moving in. The water trailer was in my garage running through a commercial grade filter for 2 days before it stopped smelling like 'feet' and ammonia.
This is the water I used to setup my system.... and all is alive and well 8 months later (including the cyano, but I don't think that's the fault of the water
)Needless to say - I got the ~100 gallons of water I used for free and will know better than to rely on that LFS in the future.
(the previous is "NOT" the recommended proceedure for moving your system... just in case
)Best of luck,
John.
