got a salt ?

[acrodave]

I posted this in the RD room.. tell me what do you think

Ok i have been useing TMPR for over a year now and i know a lot of people that do..Now here is the ? I work in a lfs and had a lady come in and buy a box of TMPR. She then calls me back saying you cant use the salt without a CA reactor.. I told her i have never hear that and were did she see that . and she told me its on th box.And on the box its says especially designed for use with CA reactors or mineral additives. and thats all it says...What dose that mean..I told her i still have never heard that. and we got into about it .So whats the deal should we useing a ca reactor with it or does that just mean it work well with one...Any one..??

 

[Runner]

No idea, but sounds like they are trying to sell you their mineral additives.

 

[ct_vol]

I spoke with the Tropic Marin rep at Macna and he helped to explain this a bit...

I was fairly well bashing his product and saying it wasn't worth the extra money... I told him I didn't see the difference between the Reef Crystals I use and the TMPR. He said that the difference is in the consistancy of product. They use an ultra refined salt that is produced for human use in Germany... It is certified by Germany's version of the FDA... Supposedly the Red Sea has benefits for people with psoriasis... TMPR buys the salt in bulk from the same company that produces the salt for medical purposes...

Now as far as the Calcium is concerned... TM salt and TMPR are essentially the same except that the TMPR has 40ppm more Ca and a higher Alk... The rep stated that the Ca in TM salts is "unkelated" and therefor not as bound up and is at more ready use for the corals... Corals must first break the bonds of "kelated" calcium in order to use it to build its skeleton... All that being said, the Calcium levels drop significantly faster when using TM salts because it is unkelated calcium... This would be why it is recommended that a CaRx or mineral supplements be used...

That is how it was explained to me... Take it for what its worth considering the source was the Rep trying to sell the product...

 

[cee]

This is from another forum, basically says the same that Randy stated. I find it to be a non-issue in my tank where most corals grow like weeds, but then again I've not tried the Tropic Marin product. Dave, any luck finding a wrasse yet?

In some respects salt is salt. However, in a reef tank where there is a demand of Ca+ among other minerals a clear line can be drawn. Most brands of salt use a kelated calcium formula: meaning that the salt will dissolve very quickly in water and be clear within a few minutes.

The down side to this is that the calcium is much more difficult to remove from solution by the critters involved in reef building (corals,algae, etc).

A brand such as Tropic Marin is an unkelated mixture, it does not mix as easily. However, there is a much greater percent of calcium that can be more easily removed by biological process. This superiority is furthered by ensuring that the Mg level is already at a 3:1 ratio to Ca+ . This is a critical step in the equation as Mg is really the limiting agent in biological use of Ca+ not the Ca+ itself.

It is meaningless for a brand to brag that it has 400 or even 450 Ca+ and not include the propper amount of Mg or remind you to test and suppliment for it.

How do you know what is going on in the tank: Test. A number of around 400 + seems to be fine for most common reef set-ups (actually anything over about 325 is still allowing Ca+ to be used by the organisms) This is provided that your Mg level is around 1200 or so.

Don't go too much higher than that as it causes other feed back reaction problems, but less than that reduces the amount of usable Ca+

The whole issue is really moot if you are a Ca+ and Mg supplimentor. I plan to do this as my reef matures and begins to demand more Mg and Ca than a simple water change can deliever.

 

[Flavum]

hmm intresting.....what do you use dave?

 

[EvilMel]

Chelated, guys. It's chelated.

Sometimes if something is chelated to another compound it becomes MORE biologically available to the organisms, not less. Whereas in its free form, it may be more or less easily used. It depends on a few things.

I'm not sure how it relates to salt or calcium, but I did study this a bit in graduate school because the project on which I worked dealt with iron in the ocean. Iron has a very low solubility in water at a neutral pH, so sometimes if you bind it to a ligand (a metal chelating compound, such as EDTA), then more of it "dissolves" into the water. It's sort of a way to trick more iron into going into solution.

The issue then becomes: does the organism have the ability to pull the iron away from the chelator? If the chelator binds with very strong affinity (such as desferrioxamine B does) then there's not much possibility that the organism can gain access to it. However, if the iron is bound fairly loosely (low binding affinity), then it's likely that the organism will be able to access the iron. It has to do with the binding affinity of the ligand (the chelator) to the metal (or calcium, or whatever).

So realistically...the calcium being bound by whatever this unknown chelator is, and how much of it is accessible, really depends on:
a) the binding affinity of the chelator for calcium
b) the natural solubility of calcium in the water w/ and w/o the chelator.

Oh and I'm not sure what the various chemical forms of calcium there are, but it would depend on that too.

 

[ct_vol]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13376228#post13376228 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by EvilMel
Chelated, guys. It's chelated.

lol No wonder Merriam couldn't help me... I promised I looked it up first...

The rest went right over my head... My brain is poop after last nights exam... I'm looking forward to a UT win and some brews to help set it straight again...

 

[TriMax]

Funny, I knew about chelating from working with Radiological material. Chelating agents can be used to make it easier for your body to reject/ eliminate radiological material, which has been internally depsited. I had never heard of "unkelated". I just thought it was something else I had never heard of. There are lots of those.

Eddie