Water changes please enlighten

[trackfast]

Powerhead is pretty much a must. Also if you are mixing 10g for example, do 1 cup at a time. Do not dump everything all at once. Also roll brand new buckets around on the floor and shake them before you use them.

Never heard about the rolling thing. Is it to incorporate a little air into the salt? (like when measuring flour?)

 

[Tethered_Limbs]

there are pockets of bad mix in there, low alk, and such. its good to mix it up. ideally you would buy a bucket of a few different mixes n mix them up, but this is impractical. mixing the buckets works well

 

[Greg]

When shipping the buckets they get vibrated a lot. What ends up happening is the separation of different sized particles and even elements. You then get inconsistent/odd measurements in your salt after mixing. There can be random pockets whith parameters out of wack.

Ever hear of someone complaining about a 'bad batch'? 90% of the time they either mixed improperly, or used the top layer of salt without shaking the bucket, got bad readings, and started flaming bad batch. The top layer is notorious for bogus readings.

Although if you use the whole 200g you would have good parameters, if you only used the top layer you would likely have odd parameters. The rest of the salt would be odd on the opposite side to compensate for the top.

Many people pour it from one bucket to another to mix it. Or if it comes in a bag pour the bag into the bucket. Personally if i have a bag, i dump into bucket. If no bag, i just give it a good shaking.

This has nothing to do with how good/expensive a salt it. It happens to all salts.

 

[mlreef]

I do 20% every 2 weeks for both of my tanks.

For my 450 display 620 total gallons, I probably only do 10% every 2 weeks due to the low bioload in that size of a tank.