Changing Water Parameters

[Scorpeo]

Well,

I read all the posts to this thread, and really one of you had a point. I had posted a question to another thread a couple days ago, and instead of people answering my question, one person in particular made a long spiel about basically how everyone and everythign i've ever read is wrong and only they were right. That's unattractive. I didn't want to leave the hobby but i definitely considered leaving the forum. However, I am not so easily deterred.

My question now is still this: how do I raise the sg of my tank without killing or freaking out my fish, and my anemone? I really worry about the anemone. I want to get the sg from 1.023 to about 1.026. How do I do that? I had the idea of dripping the tank. I put a gallon of mixed water with sg 1.028 on top of the tank and dripped it overnight. The sg really didn't go up at all. And I didn't expect it to, I only wanted to see if it would freak out the anemone. It didn't but how would I get the sg up in enough time that the adverse effects of unnatural sg wouldn't take over the anemone?

I do 10% changes, except when I had a wierd spike of nitrate I did 25% changes, weekly- or bi-weekly around midterms or finals. Finally someone told me it's not altogether bad it just promotes algae growth. I have enough urchins, crabs and snails to take care of that. What I couldn't figure out for the life of me, my sg dropped after I added the anemone. It went from 1.023 to 1.022 in just over 4 days. How can I deter that or prevent that between water changes because I'm fighting an uphill battle? In the two nights that i've "dripped" my tank all I've been able to do is keep it at 1.023


28g nano
Nitrite: 0ppm
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrate: 25-35ppm
pH: 8.4
temp: 86F

Please someone actually answer my question if you just have to tell me that i'm the most ignorant hobbyist ever.

[leebca]

I moved this post from the thread: How to Make a Successful Water Change

Some of the needed help is not directly related to water changes as much as it relates to making changes in water parameters.

It's fairly easy to make sp gr changes to a tank/system in operation. Don't replace evaporated water with RO/DI or distilled water, replace evaporated water with salt water. Also, remove some water and replace it with higher sp gr water.

The sp gr should not go up by more than 0.002 sp gr units per day, regardless of the method used.

[sober_pollock]

Scorpeo.....

Glad you are sticking around.....

Let's start with this question.....Exactly how are you measuring the salinity of your tank water?

What device are you using?


pollock

[Scorpeo]

Scorpeo.....

Glad you are sticking around.....

Let's start with this question.....Exactly how are you measuring the salinity of your tank water?

What device are you using?


pollock

I am using a Red Sea hydrometer/thermometer combo unit. It tells u the temp on this digital thing and measures the sg like any reg hydrometer. It has a suction cup on it that allows u to put it in the tank and measure real time. Anyway I usually put the stopper in the bottom and sit it down and let it settle for a minute.
In the tank it fluctuates--a lot, even when i turn the pump off. So I usually just take the reading outside the tank. (water in the hydrometer, hydrometer on the stand...