Oh No!

Bad things happened today. To think about it so much happened I have no idea how to begin. I introduced a chemical phosphate removal media into the filtation system this morning. In the process of meddling with the hoses, lost a little aquarium water. In the case of natural evaporation, you can't top up the water with salt water because only water evaporates, salt stays behind. If you keep topping up with salt water, then the salinity of the aquarium will be affected. You'd need to use plain water. Tap water has chlorine, and so i went to the supermarket to buy a couple of litres of distilled water. Today's case was a matter of both, I needed to add both salt water to replishnish the water lost through all that messing with the filters as well as to top up distilled water to compensate for the effects of evaporation.

This is what you should do, mix marine salt with distilled water outside the aquarium, stir and dissolve it in a bucket or something to a salinity level slightly below that of the aquarium, pour in it, and everything is good. What you should not do, is to top up the aqaruium with distilled water and dose salt salt into the aquarium directly. Knowing full well what i shouldn't do, I did exactly that and for that laziness, bad things happened. So the salt mix settled and covered the coral. I thought that the water will dissolve it in a matter of minutes, but I was wrong, the concetration of salt on the coral itself stressed the coral out so much that it secreted so much mucus and it started to bleach.

All that happened today caused a drastic change in water parameters and for that, I've observed many negative effects on the tank and whatever's inside. I ought to be shot for this.

In my mind I'm also thinking, is it the salt? or is the distilled water? or is it the phosphate remover? Too many variables all done at one time, its hard to isolate the cause.

Sigh.