Can I still use it?

[kevin95695]

So last night I started a bucket of seawater. Started filling bucket with RO/DI. Plugged in the powerhead to mix. Tossed in a full dose of salt. After testing the tank, noticed I needed to dose dKh buffer so I threw some in the bucket too. Got sleepy so I turned off the water and powerhead, figuring I'd be better off doing this in the morning.

When I woke up this morning the bucket was half full (as expected) but it appeared salt and or buffer had come out of suspension because there was a pile of white stuff visible on the powerhead. No big deal. So I plug in the powerhead and start adding more RO/DI. Cloud city. Still. Like 20 minutes have gone by.

I'm no chemist: Can I still use the water?
I'm no chemist: What happened?
I'm no chemist: Speak slowly.

Thank you.

 

[kevin95695]

Still mixing, still cloudy.

 

[eckrynock]

If it's still cloudy 45 minutes later, I wouldn't use it. JMO.

 

[mpoletti]

That only happens when you use the buffer and leave it in there over night. The powerhead turns all white, but you can whipe it off.

This happened to me once, It was not worth my $5 of salt mix in a 20g SW batch to chance my reef. I threw it out and made a new batch.

 

[shiveley]

I don't see how that would have made the water turn bad though...

 

[shiveley]

Won't the particulate buffer eventually dissolve into solution?

 

[kevin95695]

Still can't see more than 1" into the water. Don't want to risk bad things, but like shiveley says, and this may be my ignorance, I don't see how it would be "bad". Same stuff in the water that was in it last night... ???

 

[kevin95695]

By-the-way: It was a liquid dKh buffer. And I don't think I'm going to use the water. But by nature I am very curious -- What is going on in that water?

 

[CaliforniaDreamer]

Sounds like you had a very concentrated SW solution and adding the dKh buffer caused calcium carbonate to precipitate out. Once this happens it will not easily dissolve back into solution. Worse than that, the fine calcium carbonate precipitate can be the nucleus for additional calcium carbonate crystallization. In normal seawater the combination of calcium and carbonate ions are supersaturated for calcium carbonate. What prevents them from crystallizing out from the sea water is the presence of magnesium which has a stronger affinity for the carbonate ion and also tends to “poison” crystals of calcium carbonate that do form preventing further growth. In any case, getting calcium carbonate crystals to re-dissolve into seawater requires the ph to be fairly low, as in a calcium reactor. I am not sure how you mixed the SW but you should always add the salt mix to the full amount of RO/DI and not allow the concentration to exceed normal values (1.026 or so).

 

[CaliforniaDreamer]

woops, double post

 

[kevin95695]

Hmmm. Yep, full dose of salt went in 1/2 bucket of water. I'll dump it when I get home. Thanks.