Salt stuck to bottom of tank

wcolwell88

wcolwell88

AC Members
Jun 25, 2007
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Oakland, MD./Terra Alta, WV.
www.waynecolwell.com
I've had my new tank running with the equipment in it for a month or so. I have salt in the water but I have not added sand or live rock yet. It appears that I have some salt that has settled to the bottom of the tank. I'm getting ready to drain the tank to replace with RO water(Culligan). I tried scraping at the salt on the bottom of the tank with my algae scraper, one of the rough sponge types, and the salt seems very hard to get off. Is this normal?
 
No,it's not normal at all. The salt should go into solution unless you have a situation where the water just can't take up any more salt "dead sea etc." It's a culligan ro unit or water softener?
 
The water I will be putting in is from the Culligan machine at Wal-Mart which is ran through an Reverse Osmosis set up and then an ultraviolet thing. The water in the tank now is tap water. I'm changing because my tap water test came up with high phosphates and nitrates and traces of copper.
 
I'd check the water from the culligan machine prior to adding to the tank. A lot of time the filters on commercial models are quite neglected and in addition to if they are adding a softening agent "salt" you may have some issues. I don't see how it's possible for the salt to stay out of solution though unless you have very, very high concentrations in your tank water.
 
Also the salt that I used is Reef Crystals. I poured it directly into the tank I just tested the water with my instant ocean hydrometer and it came up just under 1.021 so I'm pretty sure it should be able to hold a lot more salt. I havn't had much water flow in the bottom of the tank so I don't know if that could be a problem or not. Its a real thin layer. It does not cover the whole bottom of the tank, there are just some areas like that.
 
very odd indeed....the best suggestion i would say is to get some vigourous flow in there and, if possible, get good flow around the lower levels of the tank to stop it from settling and see if it will dissolve that way....I had this a couple of times back when i used Instant Ocean, but never with RC...Could be a bad batch i suppose...what is the date on it?

Niko
 
I think the salt is old. Under the bar code it says "RC3-50 01/04" It is a 50 gal. bag so I assume the 01/04 is either the date it was made or the date it expired. I bought this from the seem people who talked me into a prism skimmer and almost talked me into crushed coral so it doesn't really surprise me if the salt is bad. I will not be buying anything else from this store. I'm going to order a 150gal. bucket online soon, when I order my Koralia #2s and my Phosphate Reactor. Hopefully this will be better. I think all my future equipment will be from PremiumAquatics.com. So far I have had excellent service with them, I'm in a 2 day ground zone, and they have great prices. Also, I noticed that that same Prizm Skimmer I paid $200 for can be bought online for about $80. Luckily I did take it back and get my money back before I used it. So, is this salt bad?
 
Are you sure its salt? If you're adding regular marine mix, even if it doesn't dissolve it shouldn't crust up on the tank. Could it be limescale or something that was there when you set the tank up?
 
Also, you might want to do some research about that prizm skimmer...I hear they are more effective as footballs, or something to that effect.
 
sploke said:
Also, you might want to do some research about that prizm skimmer...I hear they are more effective as footballs, or something to that effect.
Click to expand...

I returned that skimmer. I now have a Remora w/ Maxi-Jet 1200. Also, I'm not sure what it is. It has an off-white color, thin layer. It looks just like the salt creep I'm scrubing off the top of the tank where I let it get a little too low before topping it off. The stuff at the top of the tank is a little hard to get off but does come off. It comes off in flakes. I looked around online and found these 2 products:


http://www.thatpetplace.com/pet/group/10543/product.web

http://www.thatpetplace.com/pet/group/14502/product.web

Would either of these make this easier to get rid of? The crusty stuff(salt creep?) around the top is tough to get off but does come off. I'm not sure if I'm making any progress at all on the bottom of the tank. It doesn't look like it.
 
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