Q: Salt

The other day I bought some Salt from a hardware store with said it was for
a salt water pool, I was interested in seeing how the water quality was
after mixing it with tap water, so I bought a bag (it was very cheap) and
mixed it with water directly from the tap into a spare 4 foot tank (90gal or
340L), the salt was very grainy, which I assume was rock salt, it was not a
perfectly clean mix, after about 20 cups of salt there was a few grains of
what looked like glass or clear rock and some dirty small clear rocks which
looked like it might have been lime. I got the gavity meter to read 1.026
after 24 hours, the proten skimmer didn't remove anything over that time,
but the next day it was over flowing with a yellow coloured liquid, so I
remove the cup and washed it then returned it to the skimmer, over the next
2 days the skimmer removed less and less, on the 3rd day it was around 30
mils of yellow stuff (almost 1/40th of the cups capacty). The water was
clear looking and smelt normal, but when you put your hand in the water a
remove it then let it dry naturely the skin was slightly sticky, anyhow I
didn't have the correct test kits for salt water stuff at this time and
decided to pop down to the local river and scoop up a specimen to see how
things were looking. For the first few hours everything was looking good,
then the poor test subject started to show signs of stress, with under a
hour to go for the LFS to close I went down and bought a full test kit, it
wasn't cheap but should do for quite a while. Below is a list of the results
of the tests I got (I hope I done it al right).
GH = 160
KH = 60
Iron Non Chelted = 0
Iron Chelted = 0
Nitrate = 10+
Nitrite = 0.03
Phosphate = 0.25
Calcium = Less then 20
Ammonia = 0.03
PH = 8.3
Temp = 28deg'C
Now I assume the Nitrate/Nitrite/Ammonia levels should be as low as
possible, but with these reading should the fish has died so soon ?, or is
it possible the salt mix I bought isn't clean enough for a marine tank ?, or
was the sticky feeling on the skin a sign the water/salt mix was bad. I also
think that after 3 days there should have been no chlorine left in the
water. I was under the impression that tap water with high levels of
chlorine should be ok to start off and let cycle for a few days and not have
and levels of nitrates nitrates and ammonia, looks like I may have been
wrong.

Any ideas guys and girls ?
-Andrew


Anyone reading this have some ideas what may have been so badly wrong with
the test of this salt and water mix ?