Salt not dissolving?

[nye15]

+1

 

I just use a MaxiJet 1200 in my 5 gallon bucket to mix with and after about a half day the temp gets to 73-74. I usually drop a heater in a hour or two before I plan to do my W/C just to get the temp up those last few degrees. Works very well in my opinion.

 

The other thing I also do is wait for the MaxiJet to get the water up to 73-74 before pouring salt in.

 

 

 

 

Well...

 

I hate to say it, but probably a little of both your fault and the salt's.

 

First About The Salt

 

Salts that have "normal" levels of calcium (e.g. Instant Ocean) seem to dissolve to clear in a very short time and with fairly little effort compared to "fortified" salts (e.g. Red Sea, Reef Crystals, etc). The milling of the crystals has an effect on mixing as well. For example, about 5 years ago if you compared a sample of Instant Ocean or Reef Crystals to a sample of one of the Tropic Marin salts, you would see some crystals in the Instant Ocean products that were up to 1/8" across, but the Tropic Marin products were the consistency of powder (like baby powder) through and through. A few years ago Aquarium Systems changed the processing and now Instant Ocean and Reef Crystals are all powdery like Tropic Marin. This change was good for making their salts faster-dissolving like the Tropic Marin products, but terrible for end-user handling due to the dustiness inherent to the powder.

 

I'm not familiar with the details of your brand of salt, but if you Google (or Duck Duck Go) around for people who've posted test results from a fresh-mixed batch of your salt and test your own fresh mixed batch (comparing will let you know if you're getting typical results in your end product or not). My guess is that it's got fairly elevated mineral levels though.

 

Now About You

 

As long as you're starting with RO/DI-quality water - test TDS to be sure - then more than likely your weak mixing solution combined with a highly enriched salt mix is all the problem there is. We'll focus on the part of that you can change and you'll then be all set for any salt mix you want to choose.

 

In spite of seeing lots of people on the internet mix salt your way, what you (and they) are doing is only slightly better than the old-fashioned heater+airstones method. You are actually running a settling chamber instead of a mixing chamber! (Try to find a video of how a vortex pond filter or shop vac work to make particles do what your salt is doing.)

 

Instead, make your pump aim at the bottom of the mixing chamber instead of across it. You may have to be creative to make this happen depending on your pump.

 

Also, if you use a heater, I would stop. Heating the water actually encourages precipitation of Calcium (but I don't think that's what you're seeing since you say it dissolves when you finally encourage it). Maybe more importantly you probably don't need it. An exception which hopefully doesn't apply to you is if you're trying to mix salt into 50ºF tap water in the middle of winter. Or maybe also if you had a reason to do a water change larger than 20%. Some preheating and other pre-treatment would then be advised. However, your purified water for your 10%-20% water change will be sitting there at room temperature to start with and will have a mixing pump (aka heater) running in it during mixing. Unless the ambient temperature for your mixing area is a lot less than 70ºF ,the pump's heat should be all the heat you need. So it's ok for water change water temp to be less than tank water temp. Nobody temp. acclimates hurricanes or other rain storms on the ocean do they??? FWIW, I mix in five-gallon buckets, my mixing area tends to be around 69º-70º and I've never used more heater than what's provided by the Korallia 2 or 4 I use for mixing.

 

-Matt

[imchee]

I've used Oceanic, RC and Kent and all dissolved instantly. Once they clumped up for whatever reason its literally impossible to dissolve. Keep your salt as dry as possible and I think you should be fine.

[wabbit]

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?...ted+water\

 

Read posts 4 and 12 by Mr. Fosi. I have successfully used carbonated water several times to re-disolve the precipitate as he suggested.