how to ruin a bucket of salt
 

so awhile back i had accidently left the lid open on my salt bucket 3/4 full

tried tomix up salt and it was rock solid. so i crushed it up with a hammer andused it. since then the green filmm onm glass is horrendous. couldnt figure it out. so the lastcouple of days i have been mixing a new batch of salt from the same bucket. test salinity and my water is green.

my only conclution is the moisture in the air has seeped into the bucket has contaminated the salt thus giving it phophates and now is deemed usless. so please bewareandalways make sure you salt buckets are kept incool dry place and sealed.

or i could be wrong and something else has screwed me over but at this time this is my only answer

I've used rock hard salt before same as you lost the lid although I never had any ill effects:p

Ditto.

I had a bag get pretty solid on me, and my water was fine, maybe you got a bad batch to begin with?

Yeah.. I've also forgot the lid on a bucket and used the hard salt anyway with no ill effects. Seems odd...

Rock solid, yes. I've had that happen a few times. Phosphates, no. Phosphates don't travel in humidity, so the moisture that made your salt hard didn't bring phosphates in. The phosphates would have had to have been there in the first place. The only other possibility is the moisture allowed bacteria to grow, which then died and broke down to produce Phosphates. But this is unlikely as the bacteria likely wouldn't grow in those conditions and they'd need a phosphate source to grow and survive anyways... So again the phosphate would have to be there in the first place.

I'm gonna say bad batch.

What I do t understand is my mixing container is cleaned and pump cleaned after every water change I use ro di water so the only explanation is the salt. I will test my theory with a new batch and new bucket of salt and tak pics of the bad batch. Later today

Salt is fine. Hard, but fine.

Algae is non related. You should have no issues salt related.


Salt in bags gets hard regularily. With no bad effect. Lid off a bucket is essentially a bag.

Good luck.

this is what im looking at in my water
http://i998.photobucket.com/albums/a...e/101_6595.jpg

Surface algae.

My 20g gets it due to lack of surface skimmer.