Changing salt mix.

[Jonesrd1]

Well after 35 years of Instant Ocean I got tired of supplementing Ca, Mg, and trace elements. My question is how fast can I make the the shift to a different salt. Currently I do a 10% continuous water change weekly. Should I just be patient with this rate or should I do some modest bulk water changes? Let me know what you think

Thanks,

Ron

 

[mcgyvr]

You can change anytime you want..
Your water change amount is unlikely to cause any problems and we assume your new salt is closer to the tanks parameters so a swing is unlikely...

 

[biecacka]

Ron, are you suggesting that with other brands of salt you won’t need to run a calcium reactor or dosing set up? What salt are you switching too?

Corey

 

[Jonesrd1]

Corey, I am going to give LiveAquaria’s black bucket a shot after running an ICP-MS analysis and liking the trace element concentrations. I always add excess calcium as I acetate dose using calcium acetate. I am not expecting to eliminate dosing just hoping to limit it to coral growth needs. Please don’t get me wrong here IO is a great salt for FOWLR but has some limitations for sps especially if you travel a lot. I also use immobilized FeOHx (I hold the long expired US patent for GFO etc use in aquaria; it has been nice to see it catch on over the years). Also from my analysis I would guess that LA salt is just modified Fritz but that’s just a SWAG. Thanks for your interest I suspect you would tell me the same thing as mcgyvr.

Ron

 

[biecacka]

I’m hunting exactly what he posted. It will have little impact on the tank. Your response makes more sense and clarifies things up, thank you.
Jason fox uses IO in his tanks............but I am sure he doesn’t travel a lot but I don’t know.

Either way, I see more and more people going to “higher” end salt and one hung I’ve noticed is that IO is no longer cheaper by a long shot. So save $5-8 and have a cleaner salt is worth it to many. It makes sense to me.


Corey

 

[otimer]

I'm sure you may switch a new salt bucket over the previous salt bucket, if the salts and your tank parameters are in normal ranges.
Mathmatically only 10 % of parameter differences will be reflected to the those of the system water, if you perform 10% water change.

For example, alk of current tank water is 10dkh and that of new salt is 8dkh. The change of tank water alk is 0.1*(10-8). Thus tank alk will be 9.8dkh after 10% water change.

 

[ThRoewer]

I would do the transition over the regular water changes unless there is an urgent need to switch right away.

This might be of interest: The Toxicity of Synthetic Sea Salts and Natural Seawater to the Development of White Sea Urchin (Lytichinus pictus) Larvae

 

[Jonesrd1]

Thanks for the reference. It is nice to have things backed up by science. Four weeks into my 10% water changes my results have been excellent. I still am however interested in knowing how others have found changing salt mixes in their systems to be.

Ron

 

[Vinny Kreyling]

I have often use different salt mixes sporadically if I find myself winning it.
I have used ESV many times with no problem.
In fact I have a 100 gallon mix I just won.
IO is what I use normally because I have a connection & get it very reasonably, & the tank does well with it.