ole farny
NJRC Member
anyone ever done this? just found i've been doing it, unintentionally.
i put some really nice mature rock in a brute can with circulation about a year ago and added some clean dry and some previously used but dried out rock over the course of the last year. through a reactor with carbon and gfo on it a few months in to help with any phosphate and gunk bound up in the rocks which worked nicely every time i checked on it. i'd occasionally swap out some old water change water with the water in the can to add some nutrients and presumably bacteria and micro fauna to the cook.
about 6 or 8 weeks ago i put the last new dry rock island i glued up for my new build into the can and topped up to make sure everything was covered with enough water. when i checked in this weekend, my water lever was down below the top of my rocks and i had a lot more evap than i ever thought i would. my salinity got up to 52 ppt, or like 1.040 for the specific gravity folks. topped it back up with some fresh ro/di in panic mode, before stopping to think if it would have been better to do so slowly.
anyway, i'd guess i'm not the first guy to do this, so just wondering if anyone else has done similar and what your experience was. did i scorch the soup? recoverable with time? any suggestions? i have some microbacter on hand, so will probably add some of that for the hell of it. mrs. farny is actually a microbiologist, so i will ask her, but she's traveling now and studies more fun bacteria like chlamydia and legionella, so not exactly in her lane.
i put some really nice mature rock in a brute can with circulation about a year ago and added some clean dry and some previously used but dried out rock over the course of the last year. through a reactor with carbon and gfo on it a few months in to help with any phosphate and gunk bound up in the rocks which worked nicely every time i checked on it. i'd occasionally swap out some old water change water with the water in the can to add some nutrients and presumably bacteria and micro fauna to the cook.
about 6 or 8 weeks ago i put the last new dry rock island i glued up for my new build into the can and topped up to make sure everything was covered with enough water. when i checked in this weekend, my water lever was down below the top of my rocks and i had a lot more evap than i ever thought i would. my salinity got up to 52 ppt, or like 1.040 for the specific gravity folks. topped it back up with some fresh ro/di in panic mode, before stopping to think if it would have been better to do so slowly.
anyway, i'd guess i'm not the first guy to do this, so just wondering if anyone else has done similar and what your experience was. did i scorch the soup? recoverable with time? any suggestions? i have some microbacter on hand, so will probably add some of that for the hell of it. mrs. farny is actually a microbiologist, so i will ask her, but she's traveling now and studies more fun bacteria like chlamydia and legionella, so not exactly in her lane.