cloudy salt water

[Bill B]

Hello friends, I mixed up a 15 gallon batch of salt water yesterday and it is still quite cloudy. Dont remember name. It came in a box. Kent?, not a 'hi quality' salt. Possible factors?-I have had it about 8 months (sealted in 50 gallon bags). There is a lot of white residue that forms on the inside surface of my mixing pail. Its around .025 although its hard to tell since the cloudiness also seems to make it harder to read on the refractometer.  It tastes salty... just kiddin. Any thoughts. This was going to be about a 15% change.

Thanks

 

 

[FarmerTy]

Sounds like precipitation. Did you mix the salt into the water or the water into the salt?

[Gig 'em @ NDstructible]

Curious what kind of water you used? Did you add anything to it? How cloudy are we talking? How long did you mix it for and how well is it mixed?

 

Sometimes my buckets of mixed saltwater aren't perfectly clear for the first few hours-day of mixing.

[Isaac]

what else did you mix in, just salt? how are you agitating it?

throw out the hydrometer, get a refractometer, at the very least.

[Bill B]

Thank you ALL for your responses. I appreciate it! I do make my own RO/DI water. Didnt measure this time, but the contaminants are usually very low; between 0 & 2. I don't add anything to it. I mix it by dropping a Rio 1600? into an 18 gallon storage tote. It moves the water pretty well without being a strong jet. It is quite cloudy, not even close to be clear with a tinge of white in it. Much closer to what it looks like when I first add the salt. I did just go turn the pump back on. I probably didnt run it all that long, as the straight from the garage the water is very close to my target 78 without running a heater.  In the colder months I definitely have to mix it longer waiting for the water to get up to temp.Although I have been doing a 'short mix' for a while now during these hot months. I am only using a refractometer. I am intrigued about the precipitation idea. That's new to me other than straight calcium doing that. I do add my salt to the water. Though not unusual most of what I added were big chunks of salt  where apparently a little moisture had gotten into the bag/storage bucket. I'll investigate that idea soon.  I has been a very long day. I work at HEB. If the state of our empty shelves is any indicator apparently 'the end' is very near:) For sure  I'm very tired tonite.  

Here's hopin all we get is a little extra rain.

Bill

[+Dogfish]

This happened to me once. I agreed to take some case boxes of salt instead of the 5 gal pails. Some boxes of salt had become clumpy. When I tried to mix it I got cloudy water and crap floating at the top. Almost like it had styrofoam pieces in it. I netted out a bunch of it and it took 4 days for the water to clear. I used that batch for a water change and didn't have an issue. The supplier gave me credit for all of it and I tossed it. It might have been ok but it was not worth my time. Never did figure out what caused it. Maybe bad mixing from the factory? The boxes did not look like they had gotten wet, and the salt was in bags in those boxes.

[Timfish]

Every couple years I'll get a bucket or case that has this issue.  Never had any issues with using it after 10-20 minutes when doing a 5% - 10% water change.

[Jimbo662]

On 8/26/2017 at 6:11 AM, Dogfish said:

This happened to me once. I agreed to take some case boxes of salt instead of the 5 gal pails. Some boxes of salt had become clumpy. When I tried to mix it I got cloudy water and crap floating at the top. Almost like it had styrofoam pieces in it. I netted out a bunch of it and it took 4 days for the water to clear. I used that batch for a water change and didn't have an issue. The supplier gave me credit for all of it and I tossed it. It might have been ok but it was not worth my time. Never did figure out what caused it. Maybe bad mixing from the factory? The boxes did not look like they had gotten wet, and the salt was in bags in those boxes.

A couple of weeks ago I started using my last bag of salt that was in the box.  It had hardened so I just broke it up into a powder again.  I got cloudy water and stuff floating too. Did you get yours at RCA? I picked up a new box last weekend and it's fine.