Why not to use io salt
 

http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/06...4bf5035b5b.jpg

http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/06...1f75af790f.jpg


All sps, half my lps, and almost all my inverts including my giant abalone, bristle worms, snails, conches, etc

Was this the salt from the pet smart deal?

Holee crap

I had a bucket from KEs recently that must have been the dregs from their hoppers.
The big 3 tested off the charts through the whole bucket.
12.5
420
1650

Maybe you had an Alk spike ?

Holy crap! That's devastating. What salt were you using before?

Alk spike shouldn't kill my snails

Oi! That's terrible! How did you come to the conclusion the salt did it? I'm not doubting you, I'm just wondering what exactly happened.

Io salt
 

Why was it the salt? You've been in this hobby along time so what happened man?

Did a water change, woke up to dead stuff

New bucket? I assume you checked all the other stuff like temperature and dosers functioning properly.

It's very seldom u hear some thing that drastic happens from using a bad batch of salt. Usually it's the more sensitive species that go first then if that triggers s mass die off it would still take more than just overnight. I have once changed my water with 40 gallons of fresh wartet not realizing until after that it was fresh, the salinity dropped a few points but luckily my tank volume compensated for it and everything pulled through. I am not saying that's what happened to you but who knows. I have always used io and knock on wood, I have never had any issues.

Sorry about your loses bud, No matter what it's still hard. I'll have some frags for you in a little bit.

I was actually thinking of switching to IO from ddh2ocean salt but this has made me rethink that decision.

Thanks rich, we've been doing water changes with kz and the water is clearing up already, hopefully a water change a day will fix things, we stuffed as much of the LPs as we could in my nano hoping to save some stuff

New bucket, not running dosers, had to many problems with them so I refuse to use them

Once I run out of kz I'm switching to salinity

I know of others that like Salinity but I personally have never had good luck with it.

I've been using IO now for over 20 yrs and never had a problem due to salt.
Any problems I've had could honestly be attributed to something I did, or didn't do correctly.

If you can prove it`s the salt, your house insurance would probably cover some or all of the livestock under the coverage for pets. My own house insurance covers up to $5000 which includes equipment and livestock. That wouldn`t cover it for me, but it sure would help!

It's never a problem until...it IS a problem. Kinda like the Kent Carbon recall from a few years back. I used Kent Carbon for a decade before that happened.

While issues with salt can and have happened, I've never seen an incident where only one person was affected. It's usually a batch, and many people suffer and report losses.

I've been using IO for years too without problem. Are you sure your bucket or scoop or something else wasn't somehow contaminated with something? Maybe the water you used was somehow contaminated?

I'm not trying to minimize your loss which sucks but if you are the only who's experienced this it's not likely due to something others are using without problem.

I rent, no insurance. I'm not worried about cost of the loss, just frustrated

salinity
 

Salinity seems to be a go to for anyone that has had bad experiences with a salt.

I like that their batches are much smaller (36 buckets) and that each batch gets an indiviual third party analysis and a sticker is made up of the precise contents of each bucket by batch.

This alone is worth it for those that have had problems.


While we are on cool seachem facts. Every single person in their company from sales guys to accountants all have to have a fish tank. They feel that using the products is the best way to understand the business and show you believe in your product.

if it was the salt, we should see at least a few more instances of this same thing coming up soon...

Unless somehow your bucket of salt was tampered with or something...

Sorry to hear about your loss. I threw IO to the curb a while ago because it was consistently inconsistent enough that it alarmed me. I'd used it since the mid 70's.

It's not just the big three that can nuke a tank. I lost a whole bunch of SPS to a bucket of reef salt(not IO or RC) that was deficient in Potassium.

Since the majority of the cost of salt mix is freight one must wonder how they can sell it so cheap. What quality are the chems used?

It's not correct to assume that just because no one else complained that it's not the salt. It's also not correct to assume that just because part of a batch is ok that the whole batch will be ok.

Cheers,
Tim

Just as not correct to assume it was the salt though, no?

A fair guess, sure, but an absolute, it is not.

The salt can be tested and this can be put to rest.

I would contact IO if this happened to me.

Sorry to hear your loss. But maybe further testings should merit your claim.

I don't want to sound simplistic, but that claim can be proven. Maybe setup a 10G tank and throw in some snail, hermit crab, maybe a damsel fish and some not so nice corals in there and see what happens.

This will clear up lots of speculations.

Not willing to risk the livestock tbh or put any more thought into it. IMO its a waste of time, stuff is dead, I'm chucking the salt, life goes on.

hope you're contacting IO about this. Sorry for your tank but maybe they're willing to do an analysis on the salt for the sake of others

It looks like your tank is a bare bottom... Did you scour the tank bottom before you changed water?

What did you end up switching to after all those years of IO?

Assumptions/generalizations are always risky and usually incorrect. :) So there's a funny saying... Assume = making an ASS out of U and ME

Normally I'm very hesitant to blame salt or other types of additives as it's usually something the hobbyist did or something that happened to the tank. This situation is different though. Spit.fire is an experienced hobbyist and able to discern if it was the salt, the water, the mixing pump or something he did. When combined with my own personal experiences with this salt, my knowledge of how much freight is for salt and the price it is sold for. I think it's a 90%+ chance it's the salt, but no one can know for sure.

If the salt mix had ammonia contamination it could easily do to a tank what was reported.


I use either D+D or Red Sea as they are made from evaporated ocean water.

Wifey clean around the tank maybe spray something over it? Kids throw anything in it?
I know your an experienced reefer but I have a hard time seeing salt do that.

Oh, salt can do that, but it's not usually isolated. It was either Kent or IO a few years ago that had massive alk levels and wiped out crap loads of tanks, just like this.

ugh.. the 'ol bucket full of calcium carbonate shot.. breaks my heart every time I see it. Sorry to hear dude. Been there, done that, got the wet t-shirt.

wife knows better, one of the tanks on the system is hers
kids know to stay away from the sump

Have you mixed a fresh gallon of IO salt water to test what exactly is wrong with it?

Please don't do that. Please send a sample to IO. If there's an issue, and I'm inclined to believe it probably is the salt, then IO should know about it or more peoples' tanks could suffer the same fate as yours.

Tim,

I'll throw this just for the sake of argument.

If you are the manufacturer of say X-Salt and you have one user claiming your salt nuke his tank without any concrete evidence leading to that claim. Are you gonna assume that he is right knowing he is Mr. Saltwater Guru?

Isn't it also a right of every forum member to know whether the claim is true or just a false claim?

I'm not saying that Spit.fire has a false claim, maybe he is right on this that the salt really nuke his tank. But for now we don't know as he can't give us concrete proof that the salt really nuke his tank aside from assumption.

I just feel that it is our obligations to the community to post facts not false claim is this kind of posts doesn't do the community any good. The forum should't be a place to post unsupported claims and defamatory posts.

Again, I'm not saying that Spit.fire is not correct on his claim. Up to this point, there is no concrete evidence on his claim aside from assumption. I have lots of respect to the guy as he is a very experience reefer.

I seldom posts here but rather read all informative posts that experience reefer post here, but I thought I need to throw this one out here.

agree with crimper should be easy enough to make some water test it and see what was actually wrong with the salt ! It could help somebody out who bought that salt from the sale. I have a couple buckets from the sale and have already done water changes in both my tanks . Thread tittle's like this could scare people away from using a great product . It would be nice to see what in the salt caused it if possible

Touché to what Myka and crimper said.... I was thinking yesterday of posting the exact same thing as crimper. If I lived closer I would come grab some salt from that bucket before you throw it away. I trust your experience also spitfire but think it would really be beneficial for you to give a sample of that to someone to test if you don't feel like it yourself. Or send it in to IO like Myka suggested, I'll even offer to pay the postage if you're over it
Really sorry to see this happen to your tank :(
Pretty sure that's the most popular brand of salt and type of salt used, so it could have an impact on a lot of people who switch brands of salt too quickly now because they're scared of suffering the same fate as you.

So please help the community find a reason, if it takes me driving out there to grab a sample then so be it, if you're sure it was the salt.

Plus if you toss it and it turns out to not be the salt you haven't solved the Scooby mystery.