Poll: What brand of salt does everyone use?
- Thread starter NasotheHutt
- Start date
MickAv8r: why Tropic Marin? From Bingman's analysis, the alkalinity of the product is lower than both IO and NSW. The calcium is also lower...
Thought this article would be pertinent to the overall discussion: http://www.animalnetwork.com/fish2/aqfm/1999/mar/features/1/default.asp
Shane (aka 'liquid')
Thought this article would be pertinent to the overall discussion: http://www.animalnetwork.com/fish2/aqfm/1999/mar/features/1/default.asp
Shane (aka 'liquid')
I am using up the last of my Coralife salt. I bought 50 pounds of it. Ever since I started using it, my B-Ionic part one causes a snowstorm when added to the tank. As a test, I filled a 5 gallon bucket wth fresh RI/DO water, and added in the salt. After repeated stirring, and about 2 hours time, I added a small amount of B-Ionic part 1. I got a snowstorm right in the bucket! I plan on going back to IO after this.
I prefer TM for a number of reasons. It's more consistent for me from batch to batch. It's not significantly more expensive for me than the others and while yes the buffer levels are lower, they aren't any lower than RC and if you use TM's other products like Bio-Calcium you simply will not have a buffer problem. In fact if anything the dKH of systems maintained with TM salt and Bio-Calcium have much more stable buffer systems than other methods IMO.
I'll answer for Tom...
Red Sea is the only salt that claims to be obtained from evaporated sea water. The others are all mixed from dry ingredients.
From the Red Sea web site:
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote
Sounds good! Unfortunately, it doesn't work.
When you evaporate sea water, the ions contained therein will combine into various compounds. They don't necassarily do this in the manner you want them to. For instance, there is Mg, Ca, and CO3 in sea water. You'd like the Mg to be bound to the carbonate, since that's relatively soluable at normal tank pH, making the buffer available. However, as you evaporate sea water there is nothing to prevent the CO3 from combining with the Ca, to make calcium carbonate which is not soluable at normal pH.
In other words, if you take sea water, evaporate the water, and then add the water back, you don't get the same sea water you started with since some of the ions have formed insoluable compounds.
Furthermore, Red Sea's ads talk about it being more pure than other salts since it comes directly from the Red Sea. Last time I checked there was a pretty high level of petroleum waste in the Red Sea.
And lastly, we don't want to be bagging on them too badly, but... Every single customer that comes into the store who has been using Red Sea test kits has water parameters messed up beyond words. If they can't make good test kits, I don't put a lot of faith in their salt.
Red Sea is the only salt that claims to be obtained from evaporated sea water. The others are all mixed from dry ingredients.
From the Red Sea web site:
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote
Sounds good! Unfortunately, it doesn't work.
When you evaporate sea water, the ions contained therein will combine into various compounds. They don't necassarily do this in the manner you want them to. For instance, there is Mg, Ca, and CO3 in sea water. You'd like the Mg to be bound to the carbonate, since that's relatively soluable at normal tank pH, making the buffer available. However, as you evaporate sea water there is nothing to prevent the CO3 from combining with the Ca, to make calcium carbonate which is not soluable at normal pH.
In other words, if you take sea water, evaporate the water, and then add the water back, you don't get the same sea water you started with since some of the ions have formed insoluable compounds.
Furthermore, Red Sea's ads talk about it being more pure than other salts since it comes directly from the Red Sea. Last time I checked there was a pretty high level of petroleum waste in the Red Sea.
And lastly, we don't want to be bagging on them too badly, but... Every single customer that comes into the store who has been using Red Sea test kits has water parameters messed up beyond words. If they can't make good test kits, I don't put a lot of faith in their salt.
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