composition of salt water of home aquaria
- Thread starter nematode
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doctorwhoreefer
In Memoriam
Awesome read! Very informative, thank you bertoni! 
Sucks though this is the truth of it:
In most cases, it appears that about the only similarities that Reef Aquarium Water has to Natural Sea Water is that they both are wet, and they both contain somewhere in the range of three and one half percent (or 35%) salt by weight. It can truly be said that very little else is similar.
Looking at the gaps though in certain elements, it makes me wonder if there's any crucial biological processes that lack in our tanks, or at least purely looking at the saltwater. I would like to think the hobby has 'pulled it off' fairly well so far!
Sucks though this is the truth of it:
In most cases, it appears that about the only similarities that Reef Aquarium Water has to Natural Sea Water is that they both are wet, and they both contain somewhere in the range of three and one half percent (or 35%) salt by weight. It can truly be said that very little else is similar.
Looking at the gaps though in certain elements, it makes me wonder if there's any crucial biological processes that lack in our tanks, or at least purely looking at the saltwater. I would like to think the hobby has 'pulled it off' fairly well so far!
mmn
New member
That, or the organisms are extremely adaptable!
dkeller_nc
New member
Yes, there certainly is, but it's probably not the elemental composition of the water. It's a stark difference in living things in the water column. Reefs are sometimes portrayed as "nutrient deserts" and this might be true with respect to inorganic nutrients like nitrate and phosphate, but they're far, far from nutrient deserts. If you've ever been diving at night on a coral reef, the water is absolutely filled with small critters including eggs, copepods, crustacean larvae, coral larvae, and all manner of other small creatures.
The analogy I think of is a rainforest - the soil is very, very poor in nutrients and won't grow crops without pouring in fertilizer. But there's tons of nutrients in the intact forest, it's just bound up in the very high biomass of plants, insects and fungi.
FWIW, Ron had a very strong personal agenda to prove that salt mixes were bad when he wrote that article.
I think that the data that many folks are getting with Triton on their own systems, as well as years and years of successful reefkeeping with commercial salt mixes show that his concerns were not really all that valid in many cases.
I think that the data that many folks are getting with Triton on their own systems, as well as years and years of successful reefkeeping with commercial salt mixes show that his concerns were not really all that valid in many cases.
