lower salinity help?

[steallife904]

I let the salinity in my tank slowly rise.... as well as the magnesium drop to 840. Wife and I had a baby a few months ago and it caused me to slack on the tank. First I over dosed ALK but am recovering from that issue...
Well I believe what happened is while doing the last 3 or 4 water changes (10 gal each) I made sure the new saltwater was 1.026 (refractometer, and I calibrate with calibration fluid) I put in more than I took out. While rushing doing the waterchange I put in 10 gallons of new 1.026 water but took out say 8 or 9 gallons. I assume now doing this 3 or 4 times the salt added up since I wasn't taking out the same amount. Now my problem is I am having a hard time lowering it. It went up to 1.028 or so (was 1.025), for about 4 days I have been removing 2 cup fulls of water and replacing with 2 cups of RODI. I also did a waterchange but only mixed the salt to 1.024..... Anything else I should be doing, am I ok to mix up salt to like 1.020 and do a waterchange? or just keep doing it slow? so far it has stayed around 1.028.
FYI total system is 150 gal.

[coralmoral]

A good way of decreasing salinity gradually is by doing a small partial water change and adding in fresh or brackish water afterwards. This will cause a slight drop in the salinity of the system overall without shocking any fish or coral. Do this a couple times and then return to partial water changes with regular salinity.

[mcgyvr]

Originally Posted by coralmoral

A good way of decreasing salinity gradually is by doing a small partial water change and adding in fresh or brackish water afterwards. This will cause a slight drop in the salinity of the system overall without shocking any fish or coral. Do this a couple times and then return to partial water changes with regular salinity.

yep..

And I just want to make sure that steallife knows that you should be replacing any evaporated water in your tank with freshwater as the salt does not evaporate.. If you top off with salt your salinity will rise over time..

[anthonys51]

yes i don't think taking out 8 gallons of 1.025 and adding 10 of 1.026 would raise salinity, that much in 3-4 water changes adding 8 gallons of 1.026 water to 150 gallons of tank wouldn't change it that much

[bertoni]

I'd probably just take out a bit of saltwater from time to time and replace it with RO/DI. A quart at a time should be fine. There's no need to hurry.