Bad IO Reef Crystals.....
 

I made a small batch of water last night and did a swap...

All seemed well - went to watch some TV, then off to talk to the wife. When all of a sudden I'm getting emails and txts from the APEX - Ph problems.....

Went to take a look and it was climbing..... normally I'm an 8+ kinda guy/tank. I was in a short order up to 8.8 and rising. I let it go for a bit to see what was going on and the Xenia and mushrooms went crazzy. - I knew I needed a solution. Considering my salt to be a complete liability more changes isn't an option. So, I am using Muratic Acid to keep the Ph as close to 8.3 as is earthly possible....

Last night dropped it to 8 & went to bed, got up at 7 and found it at 9.14 ouch!!! Muriatic Acid - back down.

This Salt was from Big Als on the Boxing Day sale earlier this year. I haven't had any problems with IO Reef Crystals until now. I will be calling them at 10 am!! and IO as soon as they open! I'll let ya know how they handle this situation.....

So far, all the corals look unhappy - expecting a few deaths... & no carcases that I can see.... there might be some deaths in the rocks...

I'm not very happy.....

Second report here in a week of bad RC salt...

IO...
 

I just got off the phone with IO and they have sent me a UPS shipping sheet. They want a 2 cup sample of my salt. They will analyze it and get back to me. She said to hold onto my salt for now and to get more for the water changes from a different lot#. No F'*#%@'ing shxt....

I hope they don't ship me the "Mix this into your bucket solution" then your existing bad salt will theoretically be good... NO, I want new salt, and some acknowledgement this was a huge PITA and if things are dying some replacements.

Time to hit a store - this is an inconvenience.

Did you do a water test to verify the probe is accurate? Probes are notorious for this.


Fwiw , ph in your tank falls into place rather quickly for the new salt to raise your ph would be a temporary number while c02 went to work , the water change would have to be huge to change the whole systems ph value for 12 hrs , usually it goes back to average levels within a few hours.

Fwiw ...they don't add ph to a bucket...well they do but it's in the forum of alkalinity as the two are linked ( reson why its affected by c02) so test the Alk if it's through the roof you have your cause , if it's normal range then I would be looking at the testing device.

Hcl I would not be adding to a running tank , it's very aggressive and if your ph probe was out then you'll cause more harm then good .

Hmmm second report. I hope it just stays with reef Crystals and doesn't effect regular io. Let us know what instant ocean has to say about your salt.

When you say this was from a batch earlier this year... did you mean boxing day sale in 2013?

I had a bad batch of RC earlier this year. IMO why there are not widespread cases are that maybe we end up with one of the first or last buckets from the hopper that the salt is mixed in. Sort of what happens in a sluice box . I am certain that the salt companies don't test individual buckets.

update....
 

Good Advise Denny!!!

Used an old API Ph test and the Tap water came back at 7.8'ish and the Apex reported it at 9+

So, I dug around and found a Ph calibration 4 & 10 set and recalibrated and it was the Apex... totally weird as nothing there changed, it started reporting new numbers after the water change I did yesterday (which was small). I should have though of that sooner.

Needless to say my tank was reading 7.1 (ouch) I have started adding buffer and ALK to get things balanced up somewhat... not to fast not to slow.

At the same time I have a 25% water change on the way, and will do another right after. Ill try to add buffer/Alk & raise things up a bit here and just let the changes do the rest. I hate adding and manipulating this tank as I think it being left alone is the most reliable....

I'll test my Ph on the new H2o before I change it in/out.

I am most frustrated with my Apex Ph probe.... I'll fix this Ph problem but any ideas why the apex would uncalibrate like that?

So, Ill add that it is probably not the IO Reef Crystals at this point... Yes my IO R.C. were from the B.A. boxing day sale in 2013....

In any case though this is a good lesson to be taught , always test your first (even last cup) in a bucket or box , bad salts are an easy possibility and they happen all the time so don't trust salt mixes , the other being always verify things with a different test/type .

Fwiw a ph reading of 9 would be fatal to the animals and would be very hard to achieve , the same can be said for very very low readings.....when these appear something is a miss and it's usually the testing error

I would Test your Alk levels now as well to just to be on the safe side :)

Good luck man a bad batch of salt would have been way harder to resolve as you don't always know what in the salt is doing the damage , equipment failures start you in the right direction right away :)

As for the apex coming out of calibration wher in the sump do you keep it? And this is a new move right from the other house maybe something happened during the move and re setup? Hard to say mines been out of whack for a long time like yours reads 9 lol