Aqua Vitro Salt Question

ENARP · Aug 18, 2016

I started my 45 JBJ with Red Sea Pro Salt and it has been up and running about 5 months. On a resent out of town trip, I stopped at a great aquarium store. (No LFS in my area.) All the corals I got from them were perfectly healthy and doing great in my aquarium. I was about to run out of salt and asked if they had Red Sea Pro, which they did not have. They recommended and I purchased Aqua Vitro Salinity for Reefs from them and just 3 weeks ago started using this salt mixture. I noticed from the start that there was residue settled in the bottom of my mixing bucket that was not there with the Red Sea Mix. Three weeks after starting using this salt I have had an outbreak of brown diatoms. Could this residue be silica and the cause of this outbreak? Has anyone had this problem using this product? I went through the new tank diatoms a few months ago so I am not sure of the cause, but the salt mixture is the only change I have made.

cmcoker · Aug 19, 2016

Not sure about the diatoms, when I used Salinity in the past it was easy to get precipitation if you did not add the salt slowly enough. I imagine that's the residue you saw. I had to slowly sprinkle the salt, much slower addition than I do for red sea Blue bucket or pro

Nibejeebies · Aug 19, 2016

I have been using AVS almost the length of my time in the hobby. The key when mixing it is poring it in extremely slow. I tend to mix mine in batches of 20-30 gallons, and I I've gotten pretty good results taking a full 5 to 10 mintues adding the salt. Slowly poor a cup at a time in, I use a pump so I'll slowly poor in a cup, make sure it's not settled any where, and move on to the next, it it does start to settle I'll point the hose from the pump directly at it untill it's dissolved and return to adding salt, but slower.

BluewaterLa · Aug 19, 2016

I've been using aqua vitro since 2004 maybe a little longer. And have not had any issue with it causing problems in my tanks.
Mixing it slow is good for clarity.
I've mixed it fast several times and used the cloudy mix in a fully stocked sps reef with no ill effects. The water in the tank clears up within minutes.
Even contacted seachem about this same issue as this problem has seemed to come about in recent years.
They said in an email that they too have residual grey dust in their test lab after making test water from every batch of salt.
I am not worried about mixing the water fast and using it within 8-10 hours of mixing as my reef has always been stable and healthy while using their salt in several systems over the years.