Adding brackish water after mulitple water testings

[attygirl]

Hello: I know you are supposed to "top off" your tank with distilled water as it evaporates. However, my tank is very small, only 1.2 gallon. I have been doing testing of the ammonia and nitrite content with the API test kit due to my prior horrible first attempt and consequently, removing water from the tank. Thus, I am curious if I should be adding some brackish water when the water level looks low? If I keep adding distilled, will that just dilute the brackish level?

That being said, the shrimp seem to be doing okay . . . no deaths! I did my first feeding last week, and they quickly ate the food.

Thanks.

[yoster]

I'm new to keeping aquariums, but salt never evaporates. You would lose salt slowly from the aquarium if you test with those tiny test tubes. Some salt would also be lost in a very slow way with strips. With a tank that small, I would just add more water with testing for salt levels once a month or two. I used to test a lot when I first started up a new tank, but due to sheer laziness, I stopped testing all together for ammonia or salt levels. I even have a top of the line Milwaukee Digital Salinity Refractometer that collects dust pretty much. These shrimp are pretty tough, and I have cut down the feeding to once every couple of weeks if I remember at all. I even thought loud noises would kill these shrimp, but that is not the case either. I have the aquarium about 2-3 feet from a sound system that I blast once in a while, and they don't get scared. There is a good chance it might stop them from reproducing, but I got the bigger aquarium so they could have a lot more room to swim around in.

[LeShrimp]

Generally you don't lose much salt as only the water evaporates and the salt is left behind (hence why humans don't need to add salt to the ocean!).

[Mustafa]

As yoster already said, you're not going to do much testing (actually none at all) in the future, so don't worry too much about having to add saltwater. Plus, these guys have a very large tolerance for salinity, so changes in either direction won't affect them. If you do remove large quantities of water from the tank in a gradual manner (for whatever reason) you could always prepare a small container/bucket of brackish water (with about the same salinity water as the water in your tank) and just add the exact same amount of water that you removed to the tank. And, of course, you'll still used destilled/RO water for replacing evaporated water.