Dunno, I thought everyone knew this was dangerous to stock. It seems a bit stupid to intentionally massively increase localised salinity and not expect bad things to happen. Maybe someone could try it as an AIPTASIA treatment I'm not sure about the claim of testing his scrubbers ability (or something along those lines). Does he mean he intentionally killed stuff off to see if the scrubbers grew better?
Anyone who knows anything at all about saltwater knows that you're not supposed to mix salt directly in the tank. It's bad enough to use saltwater that has just finished dissolving - unless it's an emergency, the rule of thumb is to let it mix for 24 hours. The previous mention he makes was when he was dosing iron. From what I recall, he was testing how much you could add without causing harm to the tank. In that instance, there might actually have been some kind of value to what he was doing, because iron get sucked up pretty fast in saltwater (by many things, not just scrubbers). Even then, he jumped from small doses to one large dose (1/2 gallon in this case), which killed off a bunch of stuff in his tank. Then he just let the tank run and monitored what happened, no water changes, running 2 SM100s on a 90g tank IIRC. So apparently he is now testing his reef pool (which we have never seen pictures of, besides the corner of the tank in his videos) by shocking it with raw salt. This is comparable to sprinkling granulated chlorine in a swimming pool, the purpose being to kill all living things. Raising the salinity like this causes osmotic shock if you raise more than 2 points in 24 hours (from 1.023 to 1.025 for instance). Simply throwing salt into the tank will allow it to partially dissolve on the way down, which would kill off anything in the water column immediately I would guess. As the salt falls, so would the (heavier) mixture of water of locally higher salinity. As this plume of high salinity saltwater hits the rock and sand, it essentially shocks everything in the tank. You can lower salinity very quickly without doing (much) harm, but raising it quickly will destroy everything. Then, whatever salt had not dissolved would sit there are basically burn anything it touched. This happens when you knock salt creep into your tank too, I've accidentally killed sections of coral like this. But basically @Garf the answer to your question is yes, he is intentionally doing damage to see how the scrubber reacts to a disaster.
I managed to bump off a nice banded shrimp in exactly the same way. Big lump of salt creep fell near him (well on him actually). Brown bread within the hour. Poor basdid. I have though added small amounts of salt to a sump in the past, well away from the return pump, and gotten away with it.
There is a problem with adding a pile of salt anywhere in the tank really though. You end up with concentrations of substances for longer than you should, which can lead to chemical interactions and precipitations or non-dissolving compounds. As long as you add salt into a high-flow area where it can get mixed in and dissolved before it hits the return pump and tank, you are probably good. Which is I am guessing what you are talking about...
Just dumped it into the sump at the opposite end from the pump, near the inlet though so probably high flow yes and not very much salt, just a spoon or two. Don't need to much as I don't do any water changes.
I know! My guess (because according to him, I am a mind reader) is that he does things like this to show what a scrubber can do when some kind of disaster strikes your tank. But the problem with that kind of test is that in order for it to mean anything, you would have to have a series of tanks, with and without scrubbers, and simulate the disaster the same way on each and see what happens to each tank. Otherwise, you're just killing stuff to see what happens.
FYI, reading that post on algaescrubber.net was the first red flag that perhaps the "SM database" has a few flaws. Half a gallon of anything in an aquarium is disastrous and I don't care how many gallons your system is.....
I don't know if I agree with that necessarily, if i had a 2000g system I might dose 1/2 gallon of something at some point.
If u have a disaster and everything dies who cares that the scrubber is still there. We grow coral. Algae is just a filter.
Right. So then the question is, why kill everything (or at least, a lot of things) in your tank? Just to see how the scrubber reacts to it, and how/if the system recovers from it? Wouldn't it be better to load your tank with corals and find out how they react the the scrubber-only system? Either way you cut it, I'm glad I got booted from his site.
For most things on a sub 500G tank, yes, that would be true. One of my tanks doesn't have an ATO and I am bad about topping off, I regularly toss in 4 gallons of RO/DI in a 60G tank without issues, but I do make sure to dump the RO/DI down the overflow so it mixes before it reaches the display. As for the topic at hand, just stupid, plain and simple, but I expect nothing less coming from Santa Monica. The foundation of the test, even if there was some reason to perform it, is flawed as pointed out by most in this thread. Just empty words as far as I can tell, never any pictures, test results, anything to show the crap he spews out of his fingers has any validity at all. I might not always post pictures of my experiences, but if asked, I am always more than happy and willing to provide them because I know 99% of the stuff you read about this hobby can go right in the trash, and I would expect others to take a similar stance about things I say unless I have posted indisputable proof via pictures/videos/test results.
Not to rehash an old topic but I read this thread and found something that I never considered before. By allowing salt creep to fall back into the tank, it is dangerous to the inhabitants of the tank. I have been doing this since I got into the hobby every time I do tank maintenance. I would use a brush to wash and scrub the SC from the overflow teeth and rim and allow it to fall mostly down the overflow but certainly some went into the tank. Thanks for teaching me something new. Tom Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
