WTF IS WITH REEF CRYSTALS SALT!!

[JMes]

Tank -25 gallons Acan Tank.
Live stock - 1 clown,1 Green clown goby,4 large mexican turbos,30+ acan colonys,dozens of Acan lord frags

Equipment - ATI powermodule,ATB Multi-Use,50 GPD Aquafx Barracuda
Media - RowaPhos,ZEOVit Activated Carbon

maintenance

50 GPD Aquafx Barracuda(RO/DI)- Filters/Cartridge were changed 3 months ago. Membrane was changed 10 months ago. My RO water is stored in 5 and 1 gal water jugs. All my buckets are rinsed thoroughly and wiped dry with paper towel before and after I mix up my salt.

I change out my RowaPhos,Carbon at the end of every month. I do my main water change of 6 gallons every 7 days. The tank is siphoned out 1-2 times in-between my main water change,and I might add a 1-2gal water change depending on how my corals look. All pumps and equipment are taking apart and cleaned at the beginning of every month.

My water is always crystal clear. When I added the 6 gallons of salt mix from this bucket my tank water turned very cloudy,milky white. My female clown fish which is usually docile started Frantically swimming around the tank. She did this for hours. A few hours after the water change all my Turbo snails stopped moving and closed up in their shells. 8 Hours later 2 of 4 of them were dead. Even the bristle worms were not immune. I had dozens either dead or dying. The only coral that was not affected were my Purple Death palys.

Different species of LPS are not all the same.(Some are more hardy than others) Also different grades of LPS are more sensitive than others. Duncans and Micromussa are more hardy and less sensitive than Acan lords. Ultra Acan lords are much more sensitive than grade A or B. So,the first to die were my ultras,next were the A-B,and the last to go were my micros.

Now about the salt. As I said in my first post. I have been using Reef Crystals off and on for years with no problems. The salt I was using before this bucket was a 200gal box of Reef Crystals which I purchased last Sept

I don't know if its the batch or just this particular bucket,but all I know is that this new 160 gal bucket of Reef Crystals salt is contaminated or just bad. Two things really concern me are that the salt is not packaged into a plastic bag. It's just dumped into the bucket. The other alarms me is that this bucket came with a free T-Shirt inside. From my understanding manufacturers use Formaldehyde when shipping clothing. So could some kind of chemical from the T-Shirt contaminate this salt?

I've done a 80% water change with a new bucket of Red Sea salt. My water cleared up and the fish look more relaxed, Turbos came out of their shells and started moving again.This just confirms theres nothing wrong with my RODI(which I already know)

[rstar]

Did you hapen to mix up the salt bucket before you used any of the salt? I too bought the same bucket of salt (with the free tee shirt) When I opened it, I noticed a pretty good degree of separation in the salt mix and thouroughly mixed the salt before I used it, and have had no problems with it so far (done two water changes).

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by JMes

Tank -25 gallons Acan Tank.
Live stock - 1 clown,1 Green clown goby,4 large mexican turbos,30+ acan colonys,dozens of Acan lord frags

Equipment - ATI powermodule,ATB Multi-Use,50 GPD Aquafx Barracuda
Media - RowaPhos,ZEOVit Activated Carbon

maintenance

50 GPD Aquafx Barracuda(RO/DI)- Filters/Cartridge were changed 3 months ago. Membrane was changed 10 months ago. My RO water is stored in 5 and 1 gal water jugs. All my buckets are rinsed thoroughly and wiped dry with paper towel before and after I mix up my salt.

I change out my RowaPhos,Carbon at the end of every month. I do my main water change of 6 gallons every 7 days. The tank is siphoned out 1-2 times in-between my main water change,and I might add a 1-2gal water change depending on how my corals look. All pumps and equipment are taking apart and cleaned at the beginning of every month.

My water is always crystal clear. When I added the 6 gallons of salt mix from this bucket my tank water turned very cloudy,milky white. My female clown fish which is usually docile started Frantically swimming around the tank. She did this for hours. A few hours after the water change all my Turbo snails stopped moving and closed up in their shells. 8 Hours later 2 of 4 of them were dead. Even the bristle worms were not immune. I had dozens either dead or dying. The only coral that was not affected were my Purple Death palys.

Different species of LPS are not all the same.(Some are more hardy than others) Also different grades of LPS are more sensitive than others. Duncans and Micromussa are more hardy and less sensitive than Acan lords. Ultra Acan lords are much more sensitive than grade A or B. So,the first to die were my ultras,next were the A-B,and the last to go were my micros.

Now about the salt. As I said in my first post. I have been using Reef Crystals off and on for years with no problems. The salt I was using before this bucket was a 200gal box of Reef Crystals which I purchased last Sept

I don't know if its the batch or just this particular bucket,but all I know is that this new 160 gal bucket of Reef Crystals salt is contaminated or just bad. Two things really concern me are that the salt is not packaged into a plastic bag. It's just dumped into the bucket. The other alarms me is that this bucket came with a free T-Shirt inside. From my understanding manufacturers use Formaldehyde when shipping clothing. So could some kind of chemical from the T-Shirt contaminate this salt?

I've done a 80% water change with a new bucket of Red Sea salt. My water cleared up and the fish look more relaxed, Turbos came out of their shells and started moving again.This just confirms theres nothing wrong with my RODI(which I already know)

dude that sucks , gives credit to those who dont do water changes , after reading this i may go that route now too sorry for your coral loss when you start back and your tank is healthy ill give you back a purple death frag(or anyones you like) to help you stock up again

[sphelps]

One potential issue I'll point out which may or may not be relevant is the amount of the salt you mixed up. Although rare I've seen it cause similar issues before when small portions of large pail of salt is mixed for water changes, you can end up overdosing on something if the salt pail is poorly mixed or something has separated. IMO if you're unable to mix large portions of a pail at once then you should use smaller packages.

[FishyFishy!]

Originally Posted by sphelps

One potential issue I'll point out which may or may not be relevant is the amount of the salt you mixed up. Although rare I've seen it cause similar issues before when small portions of large pail of salt is mixed for water changes, you can end up overdosing on something if the salt pail is poorly mixed or something has separated. IMO if you're unable to mix large portions of a pail at once then you should use smaller packages.

I suppose that comes back to the good old rule "roll your buckets"

[JMes]

Sorry,I should have added this in my last post as its an important point. I always roll my new buckets of salt before I open it. I also go one step further. I take out all the salt and place it into four 3 gal buckets. I use my handy mixing spoon and stir up each bucket. While pouring the salt back in the original bucket I am stirring it with my spoon tyring to mix it as much as possible.

I have have used Reef Crystals for years and it has always mixed up clear for me. The BIG red flag on this salt is how cloudy it mixes up(The cloudyness does not go away).This is not normal. In all he years doing this I have never experience anything like it. I am using a ATI 6 bulb Powermodule. The light is 6" from the surface,tank is only 14" high and the light couldn't penetrate to the bottom.

[reefwars]

maybe i missed it but have you tested the new batch of salt by its self to see whats causing this or if anything is off??

[daniella3d]

There is no point talking about this if you don't have it analyzed and then confirm what you are saying or not. Only a real lab analysis will tell if it is the salt or something else.

for now everything read here is just pure speculation and could be a lot of reasons for the problem.

As for me, I won't stop using Reef crystal as I have very good result with it. If any batch of salt would mix cloudy I would definitly not use it and if I had such issue with my corals I would have the salt tested.

With Kent carbon, hundreds of people had bought and use the carbon and crashed their tank, but this seem to be a very isolated problem.

Originally Posted by JMes

Sorry,I should have added this in my last post as its an important point. I always roll my new buckets of salt before I open it. I also go one step further. I take out all the salt and place it into four 3 gal buckets. I use my handy mixing spoon and stir up each bucket. While pouring the salt back in the original bucket I am stirring it with my spoon tyring to mix it as much as possible.

I have have used Reef Crystals for years and it has always mixed up clear for me. The BIG red flag on this salt is how cloudy it mixes up(The cloudyness does not go away).This is not normal. In all he years doing this I have never experience anything like it. I am using a ATI 6 bulb Powermodule. The light is 6" from the surface,tank is only 14" high and the light couldn't penetrate to the bottom.

[fishoholic]

So sorry to hear that really sucks.

Originally Posted by rayjay

IMO, the problem is that if the batch was bad, there should be thousands of people with the same problem.
The numbers of people with the problem are statistically insignificant when dealing with the size of a batch mix.
It's too easy for someone to blame a batch of salt and then others having problems jump on the band wagon and feel the salt is the cause of their problems also.
Can you find even a hundred people who have a problem that they are blaming this batch of salt on?

Not everyone who is in the hobby is part of an internet fish group. Just because there haven't been hundreds of reports doesn't mean hundreds haven't been affected. Working at AI I would say about 80% of our customers have nothing to do with internet fish boards and have no desire to join any either.

[rayjay]

I took that into account with the "hundred" figure.
How many stores are sending all this salt with this batch number back because all their customers are experiencing wipe outs?