Hyposalinity Questions

[sherm827]

I started hypo yesterday to help with my ich problem, im at 1.019 as of tonight. I was wondering if I should remove my cleaner shrimp, crab, starfish and my anenome, is hypo safe for them? I read somewhere it wasnt good for inverts. also at what point do I start counting the days until I bring the salinity back up, the day i started bringing it down or the day that I get to 1.017? Im only moving .01 a day until I reach 1.017 is this slow enough? should be there by Friday. I plan to bring it back up the same way. I am also wanting to get a better test kit all I have are strips at the moment, any suggestions on what to get.

[wharyat]

Hyposalinity isn't as bad as hypersalinity; but is still damaging especially for your echino.

Unfortunately there may have been irreversable damage caused to the starfish. They rely on water for their vascular system; any major changes can cause them to literally explode on the inside.

How long did it take you to get to 1.019? .001 per day is a decent speed; make absolute sure that you do not swing more than .002 in one day mostly when bring SG back up to normal.

[Kevin1000]

Hyposalinity means moving your salinity level down to 12-14% which usually equates to a SG of about 1.009. While fish have no problem with hyposalinity most inverts will not survive this .. as such most people will reserve hyposalinity for use in a QT or remove all inverts and live rock from their show tanks.

When using hyposalinity its a good idea to use a refractometer since many hydrometers are not accurate enough to properly measure salinity at that low level. Fish are more tolerant to reductions in salinity than increases in salinity ... you can safely reduce the salinity to 1.009 over few days .. many do it within a single day. When raising the salinity I would recommend taking at least a few days .. some would say a week.

When using hyposalinity it a good idea to keep an eye on PH ... the higher concentration of FW which has no buffer can create additional PH instability .. many will add some buffer to hypo tanks.

Heres a link on how to use hypo

http://www.petsforum.com/personal/tr...osalinity.html

Hope this helps.

[Petunia]

Great site to check out! Thanks for the reference.