Creating Salt Water Concentrate: Crazy? Original?

[lpslover]

Being highly aggravated with my current bucket of salt mix, which I have reason to believe was not even remotely homogenized prior to packing, I started thinking about better options. It occurred to me that the best option is to mix the entire package all at once. This unfortunately is not at all practical in my situation. So I started thinking, would it be possible to create a concentrated stock solution using the entire package in a smaller quantity of water, then dilute this stock mix as needed? The stock mix would create a well homogenized mix, and take less space to store than at useable concentration. Brilliant? Crazy? Little of both? Has someone tried this or is this an original crazy idea? If someone has tried it, any guidelines as to saturation or precipitation points?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Sorry, only a very little concentration is OK.

Some things (like calcium carbonate) will precipitate and not redissolve after not much concentration.

Others, like calcium sulfate, will precipitate, but could be redissolved.

 

[lpslover]

That was my worry. Too bad. Guess I'll dump the buckets out into something larger from now on so I can dry mix more effectively. A cursory stir in the bucket definitely did not work with this last bucket. Seems like they must have loaded all the carbonate at the bottom, the calcium in the middle, and the magnesium on top. Because I've had odd spikes of each as I've gone through the bucket. So irritating! Thanks for the help.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Sorry for the bad news.
Happy Reefing!

 

[cu455]

Petsmart makes something like that. It is kind of expensive and not that concentrated. 1 gallon of the can't concentrate gives you 5 gallons once diluted.

National Geographic? Liquid Saltwater Concentrate | Salt | PetSmart

 

[DeeBee]

Fritz makes something similar to what you are referring to - Liquid Salt Concentrate Fritz Aquatics | Aquarium Products Trusted by Hobbyists and Professionals Per Randy's comment I have no idea how they prevent precipitation.

 

[JimWelsh]

Both of those products are 9X concentrated. Googling a little bit, I found this interesting document: http://www.salt-partners.com/pdf/Baseggio.pdf. Table V shows that you can concentrate seawater up to 315 g/L total salts (9 * 35) and still stay below the specific gravity at which NaCl starts to precipitate. This paper does emphasize, though, that the expectation is that there is no carbonate present. I wonder if they avoid CaCO3 precipitation by leaving out the carbonate alkalinity? Notice that neither product makes any specific claim about alkalinity.