salt on everything

[ken]

I have been keeping freshwater fish (CICHLIDS) now for a couple of years. I set up my first SW tank about 6 months ago and I am noticing that tank maintenance is a lot more difficult on the SW tank. I'm not talking about water type maintenance, but overall outside cleaning of the tank. It seems that salt builds up on everything near the tank. (filter, light, power cords, and especially the glass top) Is it always going to be like this? Cleaning the outside of the tank is a weekly chore. The FW tanks require cleaning only about once a month.

 

[valdok]

Well, I have a SW tank and I only have to scrape the outside salts off about once a month, I guess really it depends on the filter, and your chosen setup. Most of my salt build-up is on the ehiem tubing going to and from my tank to the canister. But I just scrape it off and it lands in the tank, it's never a lot of salt, so I don't worry about rapid salinity changes. The most annoying thing I've found about cleaning the glass and surroundings is that glass cleaner just smears the salt around--it never really picks it up. That's where good ol' elbow grease comes in handy.

 

[BrianH]

What type of filtration do you use? Usually salt creep isn't that bad unless you have a lot of current at the water surface or if you use an air bubbler of some sort.

Brian

 

[ken]

I think you are on to something here...I do have an air bubbler running in the tank. I'll turn it off and see if the salt build-up is any less

THANKS!!!!

 

[elmozo]

The problem might be that the water is at its saturation point, so it cant take any more, measrure the specific gravity and see if that does any differance or yes, it could be the filter

 

[BrianH]

Turn off the air pump. When the bubbles reach the surface and burst, they spray salt. This will take care of your salt creep problem.

Brian