need review on Blue Treasure Salt

[AMC LSS]

I haven't actually filtered a sample for phyto, no. It probably is worth doing, but I suspect I'd have to process a fairly large sample because of how thinly distributed it would have to be. I don't have any screens or filter bags of a fine enough grade to do that at the moment, and probably won't be able to get any quickly.... My main reasons for believing that this isn't algal, however, are: 1) no associated turbidity - as you'd know from greenwater cultures, phyto makes water look murky fast. 2) the system has very heavy foam fractionation compared to a typical home system, and fractionation is generally pretty good at stripping phyto cells - I do monitor the effluent quality and it doesn't show signs of much phyto presence (but may put someunder a microscope tomorrow to confirm). And 3) the system has a pretty high turnover through ~40mJ/cm^2 of UV, which ought definitely inhibit a bloom of this size taking hold this quickly.

I did run today a transmittance/absorbance test in 1nm increments from 340nm to 900nm. The results were... interesting, but not particularly useful.

[AMC LSS]

Sorry, tried to post the results last night, obviously didn't show up.



Ignore the fact there are two lines, both are the same sample, just ran it twice to sort out how much noise was present.

There's a fall-off in transmissivity towards the true violet / longwave UV end of the spectrum... at a guess, this would be due to absorbtion by DOC. Also a slight drop-off as we move into the near-IR range. But very little variation across most of the visible spectrum - I had expected to see some activity to either side of the green area of the spectrum, around 5-600nm, to suggest absorbtion, attenuation, etc of other wavelengths was allowing the green to predominate. But the results aren't very obvious in this respect; yes, the curve peaks fractionally higher in the green range, but they are fractions of a percent of total transmissivity. And over-all transmissivity is very good, better than 96% even at it's worst point (which is generally better than you would expect for, say, potable tapwater). So I remain at a bit of a loss.

[bertoni]

I don't understand this, either. Greenish water usually means phytoplankton. I've never heard of a tank going green like this. Your system is very large, though, so I suspect that we might not notice the slight green tint in a smaller system.

[billsreef]

I've never seen what you've described, but my large volume systems have always been NSW.

See if you can get a hold of wolfblue, he works with very large scale public aquarium life support systems and might be able to offer some insight.

[AMC LSS]

Thanks, guys. I think Bertoni has probably hit the nail on the head, that it just isn't noticeable in smaller-scale systems. I really wanted to see if anyone else had experienced this with the same salt, before I tried to argue for switching back to the original brand - obviously, when you're making ~50,000 gallons of saltwater per week, even small differences in salt costs can add up.

I'm still convinced that it is some type of oxidation reaction occurring with something in the salt, as it mixes relatively clear, but turns greenish after aeration, and more greenish on exposure to ozone.

On the bright side, it seems like whatever it is is adsorbs effectively onto activated carbon - sent about fifteen thousand gallons to our water recovery tank yesterday and circulated it through GAC overnight, most of the green tint was gone by this morning. I've got a few tonnes of GAC sitting at our off-site quarantine facility I think, so I may change out one of the rapid sand filter banks for GAC and see what happens. Will update if and when completed and I start to see results.

Regards,
AMC

[bertoni]

Hmm, isn't that a lot of carbon... Good luck!

[rickyb]

Any updates on how it turned out?

[unze]

Thanks, guys. I think Bertoni has probably hit the nail on the head, that it just isn't noticeable in smaller-scale systems. I really wanted to see if anyone else had experienced this with the same salt, before I tried to argue for switching back to the original brand - obviously, when you're making ~50,000 gallons of saltwater per week, even small differences in salt costs can add up.

I'm still convinced that it is some type of oxidation reaction occurring with something in the salt, as it mixes relatively clear, but turns greenish after aeration, and more greenish on exposure to ozone.

On the bright side, it seems like whatever it is is adsorbs effectively onto activated carbon - sent about fifteen thousand gallons to our water recovery tank yesterday and circulated it through GAC overnight, most of the green tint was gone by this morning. I've got a few tonnes of GAC sitting at our off-site quarantine facility I think, so I may change out one of the rapid sand filter banks for GAC and see what happens. Will update if and when completed and I start to see results.

Regards,
AMC

have you tested the blue treasurer salt for phosphates?? i did and it had po4.

[nanomania]

Too late to reply, but jus made a new reef setup using thus salt, and its currently the best value for money. I had got 2 bad batches of coral pro salt and had to throw away, coz the water wud turn milky and never cleared, had to drain full 50g twice. Bluetreasure mix cleared in like 1hr completely. Best salt ever.

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

[jestronix]

I've been using blue treasure with no issues. Used coral pro and always took ages to mix and left residue. Both have provided same results for my sps. then again quality control may be less on the cheaper brands