I/O salt not dissolving

[REEFERJACK]

I just need to confirm something, I just set up a new 20 gallon long, and mixed a new bag of instant ocean salt to fill it. The salts been in there for a week and is cloudy as hell, just a haze of white. I'm guessing calcium carbonate precipitation. there's nothing in the tank but sand (aragonite). It was the last bag of salt at the local lfs so there's no telling how long it had been there. 50 gallon bag of Instant ocean.
Is there anything i can do to get the calcium carbonate to dissolve? or did i just end up with a bad bag of salt and i need to dump everything? I have no livestock in the tank.

 

[Flippers4pups]

First of all, did you mix the salt and RO/DI water in a separate container before adding it to the DT? Also if you are using new sand, it will have a lot of dust in it. Even if it was "Live sand" there will be a lot of dust in it. Adding the mixed salt water into the DT slowly by pouring it into a plate on the surface of the sand to diffuse the turbulence. Anyway, run a micron filter or filter sock on your mechanical filter for a few hours will help the dust to settle faster.

 

[REEFERJACK]

hey thanks for the tips!
actually i have an ro/di filter, and i've mixed lots of salt before, this is the first time i've ever had it cloudy like this in any of my tanks... i used a plate to pour the water in. it's not sand, the sand was not live, and it was washed. this is a very very opaque cloud. very fine and i've tried using all means of filtering it out and it wouldn't filter. i read somewhere about some I/O salt not dissolving it's calcium carbonate. was wondering if anyone had a fix for this or if i have to dump the water?
and yes water was mixed in a serperate container, it was aerated, it had a koralia 3 in it... the same as i mix all my salt before... never had this happen though...

 

[Percula9]

I suggest doing a series of water changes with a different salt. What are your present water parameters?

 

[Everyones Hero]

How much salt did you use?

 

[KyleO]

Must have something to do with 20L's! I had the same experience setting up my hospital tank in my fish room. I had some I/O salt and figured I would use it to mix up the sw in that tank. Had it up for about 2 months and still have some salt crystals on the bottom of the tank. The specific gravity has been stable so I don't expect the crystals to ever dissolve. Not sure what is going on there but I just wanted to let you know that I have seen the same thing you are seeing.

BTW, I don't have any issues with the ReefChem salt I use in my 300ga display......and I mix up 30 gals on a weekly basis.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Ok, i will tell you that i switched fro I/O to coralife salt. I had many times had I/O precipitate calcium into the water column during mixing, even when i mixed it very slowly.

 

[REEFERJACK]

thanks for all the replies!
yeah i'm done with I/O salt...

my salinity is normal, my alk is high...

must be a bad batch of salt... and it seems to happen to much with I/O...

any opinions on best salt for an sps dominant tank?

 

[danel]

thanks for all the replies!
yeah i'm done with I/O salt...

my salinity is normal, my alk is high...

must be a bad batch of salt... and it seems to happen to much with I/O...

any opinions on best salt for an sps dominant tank?

I've been using Tropic Marin and it's great when it comes to stable parameters. I'm thinking of switching to the Tropic Marin PRO just because of it's high Ca and Mg. I have mostly sps but it's a mixed reef at the moment and will be going to all sps pretty soon, hence why I'll be switching to the PRO

 

[REEFERJACK]

Yeah i've been hearing a lot of good things about tropic marin, gonna give it a try i think, thanks for the advice everybody!

 

[allsps40]

I have problems with 2 buckets on RC and 1 bucket of IO. After a 2 week long BS mailing and email contacts with IO there is a problem with a few batches of salt mix and the Ca was contaminated with an unknown outside source. I switched to H2Ocean.

 

[Cloudburst2000]

Yeah, I always did my brother-in-law's water changes for him. They had IO too. We had some problems with a couple buckets of salt. I think they don't have the best QC department so sometimes shoddy stuff gets through. I convinced my brother-in-law to change to Oceanic salt which I use. More expensive but better quality. Had no problems since. Sometimes you get what you pay for, IMHO.