[Willito]

I've read about this somewhere and crossed my fingers to have it not come my way. Lucky me, I think I just came across a pail of it. It a 160g pail I purchased a month ago locally. I user it last month as well as this month do my water changes. Here is how I come to determine that it's a bad batch.

My 120g reef was in excellent condition, all corals were flourishing with exceptional polyp extention. All water parameter such as, CA, Alk, Natrite, Ph, temp, were in optimal ranges. Then I went to mix 15g of this salt 24hrs before adding to the sump. It was somewhat murky but I didn't pay much attention to it. A day goes by and I notice all my corals have receded and took on a pale coloration. My initial though was maybe I didn't use the heater or didn't mixed the salt well enough...but that problem should take care of itself after a day, so I thought. Day 3 goes by and slowly some polyps slowly stated to re-emerge. I tested all my parameters and they were still in place. It wasn't until 2 weeks later that things appeared to be back at normal.

Last Saturday, I mix 25gal of the same salt with a heater and a stronger pump for 24 hr. Did the water change and the same thing occured. This time it seemed to be a more servere problem. All the polyps receded and looking very pale, 2 little frags have also bleached. All the fish/inverts seem to not be affected by this. I have added 200gram of carbon on Monday and it seems to be coming around slowly. At the moment, 6 days after, most of the mother colonies are starting to open back up, however the previous color intensity still has ways to go.

I could only blame this on the new bucket IO salt mix. Nothing else has changed. Forgot to mention that during this time my skimmer would not work properly. It would just produce extreme excess bubbles and would just over flow when I plug it in. Doesn't this sound like a chemical problem?

Any how, has anyone experience a similar problem with IO. What have you done about it?

Will.