making water..how soon to use it...

[canuckreef]

hi everyone..hope everyone's tank is doing great....

i decided that while i had my ro unit hooked up i was going to make not my usual amount of make up water..(5 gal pail) but would make up one or two more pails to use in the near future..
as with the holidays coming... it saves me some time making it..

here is what i want to know....
i have a 55 gal tank and use 5gals of make up water a week..
my make up water obviously i will use it as i need it... so that is no
prob as to how soon to use it...

the other pails...
1) can i leave them stand as "makeup water" and then make my saltwater from them..and how long can it stand..as just make up water or should i make it into saltwater and let it stand..

should i aerate it or just let it stand...

how long can it stand as saltwater before it is no good...??


thanks..

[eses]

If your going to have it stand for awhile, cover it and put a powerhead in it to keep the water moving. You can also put a heater in it so the temp is right where you need it to be when you want to change water; unless that isn't a issue in your home. You should be able to keep it for weeks if not months if it doesn't become contaminated from any outside source and isn't leeching anything out of the plastic bucket.

If you fill sealable containers you don't need to aerate it or worry about evaporation, but I would only store RO water like that and mix it with salt later. I've been doing this for awhile and it saves me some time. I make up 10-15 gallons at onces so I have extra to use to mix with my kalkwasser to top-off with.

[asmith]

I think you can keep saltwater around for several weeks as long as it is well circulated and covered. I keep a 55 gallon barrel in the garage and I always have about 30 gallons of saltwater mixing. I keep 20 gallons of fresh RO water on hand at all times as well. It is handy to have some saltwater mixed up in case you need to do an emergency water change.

Andrew