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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) |
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).
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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.
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I suppose that comes back to the good old rule "roll your buckets" |
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. |
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??
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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. Quote:
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So sorry to hear that really sucks.
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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? |
I just opened a batch of Reef Crystals and no problems. I agree that it has to be something to do with the water change. Either way, it's good to know that if my water ever mixes up cloudy, I should scrap that salt. Sorry for the loss.
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I have never rolled my salt. weird and i have ben in the hobby since 2002
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same here mike, i doubt rolling the bucket or not would kill off a tank:)maybe if you ran an sps dominant it would mess with your params a bit but to kill a lps tank in 8hrs not likely. jason i would def get the salt tested somethings not right there, goodluck buddy:) |
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is it not possible that its only a bucket or a very small amount of buckets that could have this?? why does the whole batch have to be tainted?? is it not possible the bucket could have been contaminated before salt was added?? or is it not possible there was an error in packaging?? |
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Wow.. so sorry to hear this! I hope something goods out of this for you!
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There is no way to say absolutely that it can't happen, just highly unlikely. |
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agreed def unlikely to happen often as im sure they dop quality control but not impossible human error still has a chance untill the bucket of salt is in someones home:) either way this sucks for jmes:( |
yeah sure...just look how many have reported problems with Kent carbon, and I am 110% sure there are FAR MORE people using Reef Crystal than those that use Kent carbon.
It's a small world. Quote:
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you would think if they did it would be written on the bucket i know mine doesnt say anything about it:) |
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it says this on heir packaging?? |
Yes, when you open the pail there is a leaflet explaining it inside, the salt is in a plastic bag in the pail. No instructions on outside of pail.
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Interestingly, threads on other forums are starting to pop up regarding issues with reef crystal salt. Doesn't appear this is a one off situation.
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So Jmes . . . Did your water look like this?
http://i1035.photobucket.com/albums/...0825-00066.jpg New bucket of instant ocean reef crystals. No sticker on lid. No t-shirt in bucket. That's about 15 gallons of water that I mixed up about two hours ago. Just went downstairs to check the salinity, and that's what it looks like. It didn't look like that when I was mixing it . . . The clouding happened over time. |
Egads that looks horrible.
Here is a Google search for "cloudy reef crystals" during the past 12 months only. Seems like quite a few hits. http://www.google.ca/search?q=cloudy...iw=360&bih=592 |
Yeah my reef crystals mixes clear in 5 minutes. That definitely doesn't look right.
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Thankfully it happened before it went into my system.
It smells fine. It tests fine (for reef crystals). Idk. |
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aerate overnight and see how it is in the am.
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Calcium precipitation?
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It doesn't smell bad, so I'm guess it is a different issue from what Jmes had. |
Hmm.. should I be nervous about my next water change. Have 2 new buckets of Reef Crystals.. Tank is finally recovered from accidental copper exposure!
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If the test is normal, then it's not calcium precipitation. |
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