Rock Hard Salt....What's the trick?

[Bedroomgangsta]

The bottom half of my salt bucket is rock solid. How do I fix this!?

[Bedroomgangsta]

Seriously? No one has had this problem before?

[brian762]

It got wet some how im guessing. You can try to break off pieces and break it up with a rolling pin. Put cling wrap over the rolling pin.

[Bedroomgangsta]

Man that could take a long time. I hoped someone had a really slick and quick way to solve this lol. Thanks for the idea though!

[disc1]

Worse news. It's probably lost a lot of alk and calcium and mag when it caked up like that. They make mag carbonate and calcium carbonate that won't dissolve back up. You might just want to get a new bucket of salt.

[Bedroomgangsta]

*Profanity Placed HERE* Man what a PIMA!! Thanks for the info disc1, appreciate the bad news lol.

[Anthrax15]

Unfortunetly this has happened to me too. I tried making a batch of saltwater and had to use a lot more to get the correct salinity. Was a bad water change, thats for sure. Just buy new salt.

[jeepinreefer07]

Worse news. It's probably lost a lot of alk and calcium and mag when it caked up like that. They make mag carbonate and calcium carbonate that won't dissolve back up. You might just want to get a new bucket of salt.

Funny you mentioned this because this has happened to me before and I remember some members stating the same statements. So I went ahead and used the rock solid salt to make some water for testing results and the levels came out exactly the same. I am not sure if there will be a difference in results depending on what salt you may use. (synthetic or natural). I have tested reef crystals and DD H20 will solid salt and both seem to be fine.

[Agu]

I've also had it happen with IO. Never tested it but because it wouldn't fully dissolve it was thrown out.

After emptying the mixing bucket I discovered it was coated with a tan slime. Don't know if it was the salt or because I mixed it for three days trying to get it to fully dissolve ?

[Guitarmasta37]

This happened to me too. I just chipped away at it and it worked just fine. Takes a little effort to break it loose, but it should be fine, at least from my experience tells me.

[disc1]

Sometimes works sometimes doesn't. If it dissolves and you want to use it, test it.

[cgoulden]

While I agree you have to test the results....in terms of turning a solid bucket of salt back to normal...

I have used a rubber mallet on the side of the bucket...towards the bottom. A few good hits (not hard enough to crack the bucket of course) and it will fracture the salt back to a usable look and feel. Likely still have a few clumps, but the bulk of the salt goes back to normal.

[zigzag1]

I have also had bad results when using clumped salt. It wouldn't fully dissolve and Ca and alk were out of whack. And, there was lots of white/tan precipitation. Used 2-part to bring the levels back to normal in the bucket and mixed for an additional few hours, seemed stable, but corals weren't happy with the new water after the change for a few days. I pitched the rest of the bucket and have had better results using salt which is not clumped due to moisture exposure. YMMV!