Can dosing 2-part with no water changes affect salinity?

[reefiniteasy]

Just read someone post on Facebook blaming the dosing of ESV 2-part and no water changes as the reason their salinity went from 35ppt to 45ppt. How is that possible? There are people that don’t do water changes and salinity doesn’t rise out of control bc of their dosing. I think of all the people doing moonshiners. I use to do a water change weekly and I dose ESV 2-part. I’ve now stretched my water changes to once a month, my salinity hasn’t gone up. Someone please explain.

 

[Dburr1014]

From what I understand, yes.
That is a lot for a change tho.
They probably were not testing very often tho.

 

[bushdoc]

2 Part dosing usually consists of Calcium Chloride and either Sodium Bicarbonate or carbonate. Calcium and bicarbonate or carbonate is used by corals to form skeleton, but Sodium and chloride ions stay dissociated in water, so you effectively are actually adding table salt to your tank, increasing salinity. After salinity/specific gravity raises, you need to remove some water from the tank and add RODI water to decrease salinity. To complicate matters composition of your "sea" water changes and slowly deviates towards "brine". Basically it means that other sea water salts, like Magnesium sulfate or other sulfates are now decreasing in concentration.
To compensate for this , some add third part in so called Balling method.

 

[Miami Reef]

2 parts will cause a salinity rise overtime, but it doesn‘t happen as drastically as you might think.

Since it is not the only thing impacting salinity (skimmers reduce it, for example), I’d take it as a very rough guide only.

From my recipe article;

After one year of adding 8 ppm of calcium and the accompanying 0.4 meq/L (1.1 dKH) of alkalinity per day (41 mL of both parts per day or 4 gallons of both parts per year in a 50-gallon aquarium, including the effect of the magnesium sulfate solution, 2440 mL/year), the following residue (Table 3) would remain after calcification and adjustment for salinity (there is roughly a 29% rise in salinity over a year using this addition rate without water changes).

Thus, 1 dKH per day requires removal of about 0.072% of the tank volume daily and replace by ro/di. That’s 0.5% weekly.

Click on the quote’s username to get taken to the original thread.

 

[reefiniteasy]

2 Part dosing usually consists of Calcium Chloride and either Sodium Bicarbonate or carbonate. Calcium and bicarbonate or carbonate is used by corals to form skeleton, but Sodium and chloride ions stay dissociated in water, so you effectively are actually adding table salt to your tank, increasing salinity. After salinity/specific gravity raises, you need to remove some water from the tank and add RODI water to decrease salinity. To complicate matters composition of your "sea" water changes and slowly deviates towards "brine". Basically it means that other sea water salts, like Magnesium sulfite or other sulfites are now decreasing in concentration.
To compensate for this , some add 3 part in so called Balling method.

So I guess this person had to let the tank go for a long time then?

 

[bushdoc]

So I guess this person had to let the tank go for a long time then?

Yes and also this person was dosing a lot. There are some calculators online, which can tell you how dosing changes your saltwater salinity and salt concentration.
If you are dosing Kaltwasser or using calcium reactor, you don't have this issue. I chose to dose, but to avoid shifts in salt composition, I use Balling Method.

 

[reefiniteasy]

2 parts will cause a salinity rise overtime, but it doesn‘t happen as drastically as you might think.


Click on the quote’s username to get taken to the original thread.

Thank you for the link to Randy’s comment. I must be offsetting the rise with my ato. I go through roughly 2.5 to 3 gallons a week of RODI top off.

 

[Miami Reef]

Thank you for the link to Randy’s comment. I must be offsetting the rise with my ato. I go through roughly 2.5 to 3 gallons a week of RODI top off.

The ATO will only replace evaporated water unless you physically remove extra saltwater via a skimmer or a jug.

 

[reefiniteasy]

Yes and also this person was dosing a lot. There are some calculators online, which can tell you how dosing changes your saltwater salinity and salt concentration.
If you are dosing Kaltwasser or using calcium reactor, you don't have this issue. I chose to dose, but to avoid shifts in salt composition, I use Balling Method.

My tank only requires 1.5ml per day of ESV 2-part. I know it’s a tiny amount but the tank is super stable. No fluctuations in salinity.

 

[reefiniteasy]

The ATO will only replace evaporated water unless you physically remove extra saltwater via a skimmer or a jug.

Must be the skimmer then or the wet filter pads.

 

[Acros]

I believe ESV Bionic was designed specifically to avoid salinity creeping up.

 

[TokenReefer]

This is a good read if you haven't already

A better understanding of ESV B-Ionic 2-Part

Hello fellow reefers. A few days ago I reached out to ESV Aquarium Products Inc via email and spoke with Mr. Bob Stark about their B-Ionic 2-Part. As I’m transitioning over from another 2-part product I wanted to know the potency of ESV (mainly the Alkalinity proponent) so that I could safely...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Miami Reef]

I believe ESV Bionic was designed specifically to avoid salinity creeping up.

Nope, ESV was designed to avoid the salinity imbalance when correcting the salinity rise.

Sodium bicarbonate and calcium chloride, for example, have sodium and chloride as a byproduct. Sodium + chloride = salt.

The salinity will become higher overtime from the sodium chloride, and bringing it back down by removing saltwater will put sodium and chloride back to their original levels, but the minor and trace elements will be below their balanced levels.

Overtime this can skew the salt in your tank to accumulate a lot more sodium chloride in comparison to sulfate, potassium, fluoride etc.

A balanced 2-part will have the minor (and sometimes trace) inside, so when the salinity is corrected, all the elements will remain in range.

 

[Garf]

Just read someone post on Facebook blaming the dosing of ESV 2-part and no water changes as the reason their salinity went from 35ppt to 45ppt. How is that possible? There are people that don’t do water changes and salinity doesn’t rise out of control bc of their dosing. I think of all the people doing moonshiners. I use to do a water change weekly and I dose ESV 2-part. I’ve now stretched my water changes to once a month, my salinity hasn’t gone up. Someone please explain.

Yes. Tropic Marin balling part C was designed to correct the discrepancies when correcting the salinity rise. BRS had a vid on it;

 

[pshootr]

The short answer is yes. Because sodium chloride is an ingredient in almost all of these additives. I suppose the gig is that you would develop a regiment that kept your salinity stable. Quite a complex equation, but one that is reasonable as long as you pay attention to what you do. For example, your water change solution might be 1.25 even though your target is 1.26

 

[pshootr]

I think this is a perfect example of why we can't share our example for everyone. Each tank has different requirements. But simply put yes it does add salt to your system and ultimately you will have to adjust your top off/water changes to compensate for that.

 

[bushdoc]

My tank only requires 1.5ml per day of ESV 2-part. I know it’s a tiny amount but the tank is super stable. No fluctuations in salinity.

I didn't do the calculation, but basically it would take you years to have noticable salinity issues and shifts in salt composition, so you should be good with scheduled water changes.
I dose 40ml of dKh/day+ Ca + Balling part C , so my salinity drifts slowly upwards, I just removed 2 gal of water from my 140G system and topped it off with RODI.

 

[reefiniteasy]

I didn't do the calculation, but basically it would take you years to have noticable salinity issues and shifts in salt composition, so you should be good with scheduled water changes.
I dose 40ml of dKh/day+ Ca + Balling part C , so my salinity drifts slowly upwards, I just removed 2 gal of water from my 140G system and topped it off with RODI.

I guess that’s why I never noticed and never thought of it.

 

[bushdoc]

I found this thread very educational and informative. Clearly there are many reefers who will never be affected by issue of increased salinity and shifts in water composition, due to smaller size of their systems and low Ca/Alk requirements, but you never know when you upgrade to larger system and if you are unaware of some issues, you can be unpleasantly surprised.That actually happened to me years ago.

 

[reefiniteasy]

I found this thread very educational and informative. Clearly there are many reefers who will never be affected by issue of increased salinity and shifts in water composition, due to smaller size of their systems and low Ca/Alk requirements, but you never know when you upgrade to larger system and if you are unaware of some issues, you can be unpleasantly surprised.That actually happened to me years ago.

I’m one of those reefers. 40 gallon tank with exactly 31.5 gallons of water. Exactly 1.5ml of 2-part leaves my tank at the following
Alk - 9.4dKH, Mg - 1335ppm and Ca - 430ppm day in day out. It’s all lps and anemones. We are setting up a 90 gallon at school so I’m glad I asked this question.