Salt cakes

[DragonFish71]

I come to you all knowing salties for an answer to this one.

I have a BW tank and use reef salt for my mix. It's a bucket, Tropic Marin Pro Reef mix.

Here's my question:

How do you keep it from caking?

I have to chisel it out when I need to mix. I keep the inner plastic bag shut and seal down the lid to no avail. Salt cakes abound.

 

[neilanh]

If it's caking up it means moisture is getting into the bucket somehow - either through a leak in the seal or even if you store it in a high-humidity environment when you seal it up you're sealing all that moisture in the air in there with it.

 

[mr_X]

if you aren't mixing large amounts (making 50 gallons of water at a time for a large system) of that caked up salt, you should consider throwing it away. it doesn't mix right once it's all clumped up like that.

 

[DragonFish71]

If it's caking up it means moisture is getting into the bucket somehow - either through a leak in the seal or even if you store it in a high-humidity environment when you seal it up you're sealing all that moisture in the air in there with it.

I figured there was moisture getting in. I know regular table salt you can add grains of rice or a saltine cracker and not get clumping, any ideas how to fix this?

I can live with it, but if there's something I can do to avoid chiseling, I'm all ears.

 

[DragonFish71]

if you aren't mixing large amounts (making 50 gallons of water at a time for a large system) of that caked up salt, you should consider throwing it away. it doesn't mix right once it's all clumped up like that.

It's an 80g tank, I only mix a little bit at a time to keep my SG at 1.015(ish)

I've had the bucket for about a year, my sister in law gave it to me when I started the tank. She barely used any of it before tearing down her reef. It still mixes good, I swish with my mixer a few times and no particles are left unmixed. The Red Sea salt I had left all kinds of mess.

 

[mr_X]

mixes good according to what? your eye, or your test kits? what i mean by not mixing right is that the levels can be way off.

 

[DragonFish71]

Ah ok. Since it's BW, I only monitor SG, pH, ammonia, nitrAtes and nitrItes. My usual run of tests before I do water changes on any of our tanks (except SG on the others).