Salt Mixing Mistake / Questions

[new2u]

Hey guys,

Made a dumb mistake today while not thinking and added water to salt instead of the other way around. Clearly I was too sleep deprived.

I now have a bunch of (what i assume is ) white calcium carbonate precipitate in the water.

I did waste 40 gallons worth of salt mix / water... is it safe to use this stuff?

I was going to test alk / calcium to see what it was. I was reading that adding carbonated water to it may help out.

Thanks,
Willis

[nereefpat]

If the calcium and carbonate precipitated, you won't be able to get them back into solution.

Just test and see. Worst case scenario is that you'll have to add a little alk and Ca.

[alemone]

How does it matter what is added to what?

[j.falk]

Originally Posted by alemone

How does it matter what is added to what?

Adding water to salt usually causes salt precipitation which causes this:



Cloudy tanks are no fun.

[alemone]

Originally Posted by j.falk

Adding water to salt usually causes salt precipitation which causes this:



Cloudy tanks are no fun.

I guess I just don't see the rationale why that allegedly happens.

[no1bubba]

Happening to me right now and I added salt to water,

[nereefpat]

Originally Posted by alemone

I guess I just don't see the rationale why that allegedly happens.

It's not alleged. If you start with salt and add water to it, you temporarily have a small pool of water with really high alkalinity and Ca. When Ca and alk reach a certain concentration, they combine and precipitate out of solution.

[new2u]

Basically you create a super saturated liquid at the very beggining of the mix. This causes the calcium that can't be dissolved to precipitate in the white flakes, and a cloudy tank is what results.

This isn't only if you do salt to water, it can happen the other way as well. This is likely because you added the salt too fast, or didn't have good enough flow when you were putting in the salt. Also many salts contain higher than normal alkalinity / calcium like the redsea coral pro that I use. This can cause white flakes even if you do everything completely right, and a gross skum on the bottom of your mixing container.

Mixing salt is like baking a cake, and you can't just do everything all at once unfortunately. Randy wrote a great article on it a few years back:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-07/rhf/index.php

I was pretty sure it was 100% calcium carbonate which the tests appear to bear out as well. Both calcium and alkalinity were low, but upping the calcium appears to have fixed the alkalinity as well

I don't have a magnesium kit, so I am going to have to just hope that is right. Plan to only use 5 gallons a time for my small dino sweeps so even if things aren't perfect it should be OK

[alemone]

Originally Posted by new2u

Basically you create a super saturated liquid at the very beggining of the mix. This causes the calcium that can't be dissolved to precipitate in the white flakes, and a cloudy tank is what results

I was pretty sure it was 100% calcium carbonate which the tests appear to bear out as well. Both calcium and alkalinity were low, but upping the calcium appears to have fixed the alkalinity as well

I don't have a magnesium kit, so I am going to have to just hope that is right. Plan to only use 5 gallons a time for my small dino sweeps.

That makes some sense. I just didn't imagine adding the water little by little but rather all of it or most of it at the same time.

[new2u]

Originally Posted by alemone

That makes some sense. I just didn't imagine adding the water little by little but rather all of it or most of it at the same time.

Unfortunately it doesn't matter if you add it all at once or in a slow stream. Whatever hits the salt mass first will become completely saturated and a portion of the calcium will still precipitate. You just can't effectively dissolve it in the entire water volume fast enough.

Its the same reason you can't just pour boiling water on sugar for sweet tea, and you have to mix it up. Fortunately for the sugar in sweet tea the resulting sugar can be re-dissolved by stirring. Unfortunately for us the hard calcium precipitate can't be dissolved without something breaking the molecular bonds for us.

Chemistry can be kind of nuts some times.