Salt won't mix

[ReefStick]

May be hard to see but I filled my 90G and began adding salt, I have the temperature cranked all the way up and water is moving I've even tried aiming power heads directly at the salt in the bottom and it will not mix. I am using Omega Sea reef salt. Any advice? There is a nice dusting covering the bottom of the entire tank. Maybe I should have mixed outside the tank and poured, am I able to proceed or do I need to empty the tank and mix outside of the tank and pour?

 

[LBA]

Is there a possibility of the salt being old? I ran into this issue recently using old boxes of salt that I've had in storage. I should have known because even though the bags were sealed, the salt was clumped and hard in spots. It didn't mix well, parameters were way off.

Felt bad throwing out 10 boxes of salt, but it's just not worth the headache. Switched to Fritz now and it mixes so clean.

 

[ReefStick]

Looks like it's good until 2020. Might have to look into Fritz. Any idea what my options are here?

 

[Best Fish-Jake]

What's the specific gravity running at right now?

 

[ReefStick]

It is at exactly 1.020 my friend. Just check with my refractometer.

 

[Best Fish-Jake]

The only thing I can think of is that something is already bonded to the chloride atoms of your salt.. I'd
use more of your current salt to raise the salinity to about 1.025 and siphon out the remains.

 

[Best Fish-Jake]

I personally use coralife salt and love it! Not very expensive compared to others, and is still high quality.

 

[ReefStick]

There is a whole bunch of stuff floating around in my tank and I siphon vacuumed for two hours today unable to pick all the salt as some of it would just not come up the siphon. I'm curious if anyone has experienced this with mixing salt before. Wondering if I should drain and start over with another brand. I used Omega Sea salt and it is good until 2020. Experience, relating or any advice would be great. I mixed at 80 degrees.

 

[Jason Brown]

I use IO and I let it clump... as soon as that happened I broke it up, but saw the same particulate that would not dissolve. You should be able to use a fish net to get a bunch of it out, but know that it may not provide the proper proportions anymore.

 

[ReefStick]

It's funny though because there was no clumping in the salt, none at all.

 

[ReefStick]

Well here it is, a filter sock a few feet from my MaxSpect and a few hours later crystal clear water.

 

[ReefStick]

Ended up having to drain tank and start over, I set up a water station with two 32G brute trash cans as to mix the salt before adding to tank. Having switched to Instant Ocean Reef Crystals I had no issues with any sediment, it mixed very clean. I would suggest anyone thinking about purchasing Omega Sea brand salt to consider buying another brand, IME it was junk. I used brand new bags that expired in 2020, no error on my part as far as I can see.

 

[Reef man 89]

One problem I had with reef Crystals was a brown foam crap being left behind in my mixing barrel now I use RSCP

 

[Shaddow_wolf169]

Did you dump it straight in or slowly sprinkle it in front of a power head. Always mix outside with lots of water movement

 

[ReefStick]

I dumped slowly right in front of a power head, not all at once either. I believe it to be an inferior product IME. Mixing outside of the tank seems to be the way to do it as well although there was nothing left in the 32G brute that I mixed in.

 

[ReefStick]

All and all the tank is going strong, there was quite a bit of trial and error during the set up. No livestock was added until I was confident I had things where they needed to be, so far so good.

 

[Justin poirier]

All and all the tank is going strong, there was quite a bit of trial and error during the set up. No livestock was added until I was confident I had things where they needed to be, so far so good.

So I believe there may be alittle but of chemistry involved with this. So when water is cold it can not dissolve and hold as much as if the water is warm. So when you put the salt in I imagine that it was quite cold and it was unable to dissolve the amount of salt that you were putting in. So when you heated it up the salt was able to dissolve. If you want more scientific terms saturated mean it has the max of a substance it can hold unsaturated means you have more water then salt and super saturated is when you heat the water and you add salt to
Make it saturated (since hot water can hold a lot more salt) and if you cooled it again it can't hold that salt making it super saturated nothing happens if it super saturated ecspecially since it is such a big tank.
So it was saturated when it was cold and then while you were warming it it was becoming unsaturated and as it got to the temp you want it became unsaturated which allowed it to dissolve and become saturated. I know you tank is up now but just so you know if this happens again

 

[Family Tank]

I mix my water "cold" and heat the following morning as I'm enjoying coffee and R2R.