I've been following the related story... Thomas712 is a moderator on saltwaterfish.com. He sent Randy Kolmes a sample of his "bad batch" of IO and it certainly appears to have some issues. The rest of his (Thomas712) story is here... http://www.saltwaterfish.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=87227
well the link doesn't work so I'll do this...
From Thomas712
I just got off of the phone with Aquarium Systems.
I talked to Bob Studt the cheif tester of my sample of salt. It seems that they really were not able to test it or rather that once they started to test it they saw what was happening and saw no point in continuing. There was no disscution as to whether or not I may have been at fault, and very little admittence as to how wide spread this may have been. I gave him all the pertinant information including dates listed on the bucket and where I purchased it. I explained the above alkalinity reading to Bob in exact numbers. He agreed that the high alkalinity was a problem.
I seems that my salt sample resulted in a company meeting, with employees and managment, as they became quite concerned with what was happening. I was told that they had a retraining of employees as a result. I personally know that this is not the only case. A fellow hobbiest from Vacouver(sp) Canada had the same results as I did and sufferd losses, much like mine.
Here is what they are going to do for me.
1. Replace the salt
2. Replace my clean up crew and 6 line wrasse.
I will try to go right here through Saltwaterfish.com for the order.
So I am going to give IO another try as they will replace the salt, however, lesson learned, always check the first batch of a new salt.
Glad to report a happy ending.
Thomas
Edited by Travis