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.

That looks like my freshly mixed reef crystals not sure what the problem is? :lol:

that would be fine if this was a tank i kept running all the time this is a tote i mix fresh salt water for water changes lid covers it while it mixes cleaned after every use

lol you should know you mixed a few recently lol not reef crystals just regular IO tho im thinking its a bad batch. when i started up this new batch the salt mixed completely different. the old bucket just dropped to the bottom and disolved. the new bucket clouded the whole container as its mixing.

time will tell il be checkingit through the night to see whats up

I don't clean my barrel so the surface scum does get worse I guess as a result. When I grab a few drops for the salinity test I can see the brown specs on my refractometer. I figure what the heck I run 100 micron that's not going to stick around for long.

I can't see a foot into my barrel after dumping a bunch of rc in btw.

i have never seen any scum before this is a first for me. as well i dont run filter socks so it lasts a bit forme regretfully.. but so far no scumm on this batch. see what the morning brings

new bucket of salt new water = no scum this morning. so after i do my much needed water changes. onmy two tanks i will try another batch of the old salt bucket but i will remove the hard chunks if i get scum again it will hit the garbage. or be used on icey sidewalks lol

in light of recent threads may i suggest you give it away for free instead of smashing your salt to pieces ? :wink:

omg i almost peed myself and contaminated my new mixed water lol maybe a good idea. too fricken funny

edit in hind site someone suggetsed to start a cyle i should pee in it

this is a very interesting theory. i also have started using an old bag of salt i have had for years . i had been using spoonfuls of salt this old salt in my freshwater tanks
however the saltwater tank was using instant ocean before but now i am using the old hard bag of coralife salt and my phosphates have shot off the chart.
coincidence? maybe.
im gonna mix up some of this salt and test it in the bucket.

If you happen to get a zero reading don't trust it. I've heard that the bucket can actually use the phosphates up before they are detectable by the kit!

this is what i have figured out salt is fine. water is fine but if i leave my fresh salt mix sit in container with pump running for longer than 24 hours it accumilates the scum. tehnew salt bucket did the same thing as the old one.