What Salt Is Everyone Using?

[SkiFletch]

Not exactly your typical "what salt are you using" thread here . Just found this awesome paper doing tests on commercial salt mixes. So how does your salt compare?

An Analysis of Synthetic Sea Water Mixes

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Interesting. Only scanned it briefly because I'm at work but one thing that sprung out to begin with for me is that I hadn't considered the salt settling out. Does anyone stir up the salt before mixing it with water?

 

[@ombomb]

I've always tended to use small boxes, so never, the thought never even crossed my mind.

Just bought a big tub of salt though so I may well start.

Looking through the list the the stuff I have (reef crystals) some to come out fairly average, what are the thoughts on what comes out best on that?

Oceanic looks good at first scan through.

 

[steelhealr]

Overall.....there isn't really anything there that strikes me as concluding that one is really better over the other. I dumped Oceanic because of problems with maintaiining alkalinity and changed to Reef Crystals, but, nothing supportive there. If there is ONE salt that appears 'weak', perhaps, from that data, it looks like Kent. Bottom line, Oceanic, Reef Crystals, Instant Ocean, et al....are probably just fine. SH

 

[andywg]

I would be wary of interpreting too many of those results too finely.

They mixed the salt by weight into the water and came up with results of 29 to 33.5ppt for the salinity. Most of us aim for about 35 ppt, so the samples with a lower salt concentration (Kent, or Coralife, for example) will be reading lower on those tests than they would for when you use them.

I would sooner see some analysis done where they got all the salts to 35ppt and then looked at the other levels. This would give a far better picture to those keeping fish.

Finally, with the n number of this study being 2, no reliable conclusions can be formed.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

That is a very good point that I had completely overlooked!!

 

[BigC]

I'm using Red Sea Coral Pro, should I be worried about the Copper aspect.

 

[@ombomb]

0.03 mg/l is virtually non existent and seems to be the basic reading for most of the mixes in the test, so no, I wouln't worry at all

 

[SkiFletch]

I'm using Red Sea Coral Pro, should I be worried about the Copper aspect.

I wouldn't worry about it BigC, that's a safe amount of copper. And remember, it won't be building up inside the tank as the salt mix is only used in waterchanges .

Andy, you're right about the salt point. We obviously would all mix it up to equal ppt of salt in-home use. But that data does provide an interesting look into the cost-effectiveness of the salt (even though the article does not explore this). Mixes with a higher starting salinity would obviously require less to get up to 35ppt. And less salt used means less money spent... Would be interesting to see a long-term cost effectiveness study there. Some of those more-expensive brands with higher salt content might actually not be so expensive longterm.

The one thing I took away from that was the wide variability in one of the more difficult chemicals to dose, magnesium. Options abound for calcium and alkalinity dosing, but magnesium can be a bit of a bear if one is trying to maintain stony corals. I may lean towards a higher magnesium salt in my next purchase, we'll see.

 

[weathermen]

What a test result that was, I use Instant Ocean which I thought was up there with the best! good to have this sort of information, great post Ski! I wonder if they do one for foods and additives?

 

[Matt_northants]

I found this article about metal composition in salt mixes.

http/www.advancedaquarist.com/2005/12/aafeature1

I use Tropic Marin, by the way. Does anyone know the best salt for using with RO? I mix my in advance and test it the next day but the pH always seems to be on the low side, so I add calcium carbonate to it, to get it up to 8.3

 

[weathermen]

it's funny that you say that about the PH, I rather new to salt so after my first mix I found that the PH was 7, I went to purchase a buffer from my LFS and they told me it can't be as the salt will buffer it, I advised that I was using RO water but still they said my reading must be wrong and I shouldn't need to buffer! well I do! I did try two different test kits and got the same reading! I'm not alone which is reasurring!

 

[SkiFletch]

It's important to note that even within a manufacturing run of sea salt, there is always the potential for poor mixing at the factory resulting in you getting a less than average/adequate mix. Look at the variability in the two IO samples on some minerals. Clearly poor mixing at the plant going on there.

Bottom line, only way to know is to test

 

[Musho3210]

salts like rock paper scissors, nothing is ever the best....

 

[Eviltoon]

I guess I should ask the question is there anything wrong with using table salt??? I am under the impression that salt is salt. I always dilute it first then add it to the tank...never seen a problem with it. But then the fish don't tell me otherwise.