Re: Salt

I may be wrong but that sounds like "Epsom Salts" to me. I have a friend who
many years ago had what's known as a Sensory Deprivation Tank (they were the
fad way back when) into which he would add pounds and pounds (almost to the
point of a saturated solution) of epsom salts and it would result in
somewhat the same effect you describe. It was more of an oily/greasy feeling
though rather than a sticky feeling. At any rate, if it is in fact epsom
salts then I suspect it wouldn't be safe for aquarium use.

-- 
Rastus O'Dingha
Windf&%$ed AB
"skozzy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 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 ?
>
>