Mag flake from North American Salt Co. ?

el aguila

New member
Has anyone ever used Mag flake from North American Salt Company. I know that the typical mag flake referred to by most reefers is made by Dead`Sea.

From their data sheet:

Chemical Analysis / Range
MgCl2 46.96 / 46.2-48.3
MgCl2.6H2O 100.00 / 98-100
SO4 0.36 / <.5
K 0.03 / <.7
Na 0.60 / <.7
Ca 0.22 / <.5
pH / 9-10
Mg(OH)2 / <.5
 
On the above post I tried to leave more space between the analysis and range, but it did not post that way. So I edited it and added "/" between the 2 of them.
 
I haven't seen anybody mention this product so I am unsure whether it is good to use or not.

We'll just have to see if anyone else has tried it. :)
 
I accidentally got some, even had a rep send me a detailed impurity profile but it was not complete enough to make a judgement so I returned it.
 
I have a bag of it. I may try experimenting with it in a 55G that has a few SPS frags in it and try a few water changes with it and IO salt.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12882626#post12882626 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ReefNOut
I dont see why not just use the Dead Sea works stuff?
It is rather difficult to locate in the Charlotte area.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12882236#post12882236 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by el aguila
I have a bag of it. I may try experimenting with it in a 55G that has a few SPS frags in it and try a few water changes with it and IO salt.
Just in case anyone ever runs across this, I have used it for several water changes, and it has not affected any of the acros at all.

It did say that it was lab grade MgCl on the bag.
 
If you use it, start very slowly. Ammonia is a substantial concern in magnesium chloride. You could also try measuring it directly, as I did here for Dowflake:

Purity of Calcium Chloride
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/mar2004/chem.htm

from it:

Ammonia Testing

There are several ways that calcium chloride can be prepared on an industrial scale. One of these (the Solvay process) involves ammonia. Consequently, ammonia has the potential to be present as an impurity in calcium chloride. For that reason, I tested each of the calcium chloride samples for ammonia. I used two different kits to test for ammonia: LaMotte and Red Sea. The results of the Red Sea kit are shown in Table 4.

Samples spiked with ammonia (from a standard containing 5.8 ppm ammonia as ammonium hydroxide in water) did not show as much ammonia as the test kit claimed, but it was clearly detectable in the two spiked samples (Dow and Kent Turbo Calcium). These spiked samples contained an extra 1.9 ppm of ammonia. One showed up as 0.5 ppm ammonia, and the other showed as 0.5-1 ppm. Since all of the unspiked samples showed 0.5 ppm or less of ammonia by the kit, I conclude that these samples have less than 3 ppm of ammonia in them as tested (accounting for dilution).

In short, none of these samples showed enough ammonia to be concerned about, even when adding enough to boost calcium by 200 ppm in one day. Since these solutions were 100,000 ppm in calcium, adding 200 ppm calcium to an aquarium entails adding 1/500th of the tank volume. At 3 ppm ammonia in the supplement, that means that the tank will be boosted by 3/500 = 0.006 ppm of ammonia, which I believe to be largely insignificant in a reef aquarium.
 
This is from a while back-- http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1008078&perpage=20&pagenumber=1

Some of us did some limited testing on "freeze guard" made by N. A. Salt....

No conclusions-- however I did show some ammonia-- I concluded that from an ammonia standpoint and not dosing too much at one time, it would be ok to use-- however I didn't know what else what might be in there, so never used it... I put it on my driveway in the winter instead... and just bought some mag flakes online...
 
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