Problems with IO........

[cdeakle]

This is a quote from my local online forums:

Tonight I did a 20% water change by using a small hose to vacuum the gunk off the rock and sand. It did a great job at cleaning it up. After the water change I checked my phosphates and they were even higher than yesterday. I had some salt water still in my bucket so I did a test on it and the phosphate was just as high as the aquarium. Then I tested the tap water and it showed no phosphates. I take this to mean that my salt is the phosphate culprit. I thought Instant Ocean was supposed to be a good salt to use. Now what? Any suggestions?

Anyone else out there having problems with IO? I have read about a few people locally having problems with IO parameters....

 

[cdeakle]

Another quote:

IO has sent out some bad bags, left water cloudy & had high ALK, so this may be a problem.

 

[Anonymous]

I am gonna be mixing up some tomorrow and can let you know how it turns out.There was a rather long thread over on RC about a bad batch of IO with very high ALK numbers but I never ran into any of that.
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Flood insurance Forum

 

[shr00m]

IO is a good salt obviously by the number of people who use it , but i havent had good experiences with it, my tanks numbers seem to fluctuate a lot when i do W/Cs with IO, i only use Red Sea now and the tank looks great, much less fluctutaion, nearly none. besides things like ca....

 

[cdeakle]

I always use Kent Marine but I know alot of people on here use IO so I thought I would bring it up....

 

[Eheim_Dave]

A few people in our local club had problems at the end of 2003 with some IO. Since then I started checking my water before adding it and haven't seen any bad numbers. I've only started tested salt from a bag I already had open and since use up and a new bucket I bought and am half way through. If you buy it by the bucket, no matter what brand, its a good idea to test your first batch from the bucket.

 

[Anonymous]

Was the new salt water aged and mixed for 24 hours? Some people report high alk in newly mixed IO water.

 

[Anonymous]

My IO (3rd bucket from same shipment) :

CA 260
Alk 10 DKH
Mag 800

This is mixed at a Sal 1.024 at 78 degrees for 3 days.
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Ultram Rehab Forum

 

[Anonymous]

This is after 4 hours of mixing:
alk: 9.9 dkh
ph: 8.1
Cal: 310
Phosphates:0
Salinity is 35ppt (checked with a Refractometer)
Temp is 80 degrees
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The Hills Forum