Mixing Salt Brands

[Horace]

Man that is alot of IO. Alot of folks use it, but I think I am going to start veering from it soon. I dont like the high alk, low calcium, and low magnesium it has. I run my Alk at about 7-8dkh and my IO tends to be 9-10dkh. I think I am going to either start mixing in some Oceanic which is high in both calc and mag to counter the problems I have with the IO. Apparently this is a pretty big fad these days. If I dont do that I will probably switch to Seachem. Their salt is pretty darn close to natural sea water levels for most elements. I try to stick as close to natural sea as possible.

 

[Sloeber]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6807175#post6807175 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Horace
Apparently this is a pretty big fad these days.

does anyone remember back in the mid to late '80's when we used to tight-roll our pant's legs? WTH was that all about? how silly was that? :lol:

at least it taught me a good lesson early in life - if you follow fads you might just get caught with your pants up! (or down as the case may be )

i'll do some help digging up info with ya andy and we will see what we can come up with.

 

[Horace]

dammit i did it again horace. i edited your reply instead of quoting it. i'll try to repaste your original post here if i can...

ok, i cannot recover the data which really sucks.

i really need to stop hitting the wrong button. i replied to a lot of your text below in my reply, but i know i also cut a lot of it out during my reply. if you can remember what it was you posted here i will gladly edit this post to replace it.

my bad, sorry.
henry

 

[andycook]

If you are mixing salt brands, how do you know your mix is consistent each time?

 

[Benny Z]

measuring cup?

 

[andycook]

Good start.

Can you be sure the two salt brands get mixed together to the same degree each time?

Seems to me that mixing salt brands allows the chance of getting differing amount of each brand and hitting pockets of one brand or the other because the two weren't mixed together sufficiently.

 

[Sloeber]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6809007#post6809007 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by andycook
Seems to me that mixing salt brands allows the chance of getting differing amount of each brand and hitting pockets of one brand or the other because the two weren't mixed together sufficiently.

exactly. common sense tells me that if you are mixing two salts together because neither has exactly what you want you are immediately working with uncontrolable factors, thus your desired result is still unattainable. in fact, even if you use a meauring cup to exactly proportion out your salt from each container, every time you do a WC you will be working with a different combination of trace elements.

sure IO isn't perfect, nor is any other artificial salt for that matter. but thinking you can mix two imperfect blends to create one that is perfect is quite humurous. what is that saying? two wrongs do not make a right.

 

[Sloeber]

If the result is water that has nearly natural level of ions to sea water

as a hobbyist, can you tell me how you can be assured that everytime you mix two brands of salt you get results that are nearly identical to NSW? actually, can you tell me how you are testing for the over 100 trace elements that represent less than 1% of NSW?

I dont see any possible harm it could do either.

oh, i do. my vote goes for consistent levels, time after time, regardless of what brand.

However, if I was to do a major water change with IO it would certainly scew my levels that I like to keep (NSW).

no, it would screw up your imbalance that currently resides from using two salts. there is absolutely nothing natural about your SW. it is 100% synthetic and no matter what you do it will remain as such.

So do you have a better idea how to get NSW for water changes?

yes, 2 options.

1) move to the coast
2) who really cares?

anyone thqat lives in the florida keys can attest to this -

once per month aquarium systems sends a semi-trailer full of IO salt to the government funded coral research facilities. think about that for a minute now. they have the natural ocean merely 15 yards from their facility and they ship in IO by the semi-load.

things that make you go hmmmmmmm

 

[Horace]

Ok first off I think its clear that we will never get exact concentrations of NSW. That being said, I totally disagree with your logic. We are not talking True/False logic here. We are talking magnitudes of chemical conentration. If you have two solutions that have opposite peaks in conentration, they will cancel eachother out to an extent. I would never claim that by mixing any two salts that it will match NSW exactly, but I will say that by mixing Oceanic and IO that you come as close as you can get with the current salts available. These salts were not chosen to mix randomly.

I would also like to note that it has not even been proven that many of the trace elements even make any difference at all other than the main ones that I just mentioned. When these salts are mixed, it appears that the main elements we are concerned about are about as close to NSW as your going to get from synthetic salt.

For the record I didnt come up with this idea, but it seems alot of big time SPS people are using this method with great success. Others who dont mix the salts and still want as close to NSW as possible seem to prefer the Seachem. Now if you dont mind having high ALk, low mag, and low calc, by all means stay with IO. Personally I dont like having to add magnesium,, my Alk to spike and calcium to drop when I do a water change. I dont think you can argue with the fact that ideally we should all keep our levels on par with NSW, so why should I intentially run my water with high alk, low mag, low calc all the time? Im really not sure what your trying to argue to be honest, unless your indicating that I should not worry about it and just run the levels that IO does all the time. If thats the case I dont agree with that logic either.

BTW saying that we should all use IO because the government does is as ilogical as anything anyone could ever say. We all know the goverment does alot of things that doesnt exactly follow logic. They do things for MONEY reasons. They are probably helping out somone at IO or IO actually PAYS THEM to use their salt so that you will think exactly what you are stating.. If the goverment uses it why shouldnt I????

Oh and if you have a problem measuring salt via a measuring cup, I suggest you not use this method.

Sorry Henry, you lose )

 

[Sloeber]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6809977#post6809977 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Horace Ok first off I think its clear that we will never get exact concentrations of NSW.

i don't think that is so clear. merely hours go you stated...

However, if I was to do a major water change with IO it would certainly scew my levels that I like to keep (NSW).

so which is? do you have NSW levels or do you not have NSW levels?

If you have two solutions that have opposite peaks in conentration, they will cancel eachother out to an extent.

uhm, no they won't. you will have the average of the variable. if you want to reach 50ppm you cannot add 1/2 30ppm and 1/2 100ppm and expect them to cancel each other out. instead, you will have the average of the two variable sinvolved.

I would never claim that by mixing any two salts that it will match NSW exactly, but I will say that by mixing Oceanic and IO that you come as close as you can get with the current salts available. These salts were not chosen to mix randomly.

i can only assume someone with way too much free time on their hands did the calculations for this so i won't bother tackling it. but, with this in mind, it seems to reason that you believe that if you take 1 scoop of salt from IO, SeaChem, whoever, followed immediately after by a second scoop from the same bucket, those 2 scoops will have identicle break-downs. i disagree with this. maybe it is my cynical nature, but i highly doubt you would ever have 2 scoops have the indeitical component break-down, and thus you never truly reach levels comparable to NSW, but instead bounce all around neve rknowing exactly where it is you fall in at.

For the record I didnt come up with this idea, but it seems alot of big time SPS people are using this method with great success.

i do not doubt for a second that these "big time SPS people" are having success. however, these same people likely have had bare-bottom tanks, deep sand beds, trickle filters, sand filters, UG filters, dosed iodine, and any other fad (your word, not mine) that became the rage.

BTW saying that we should all use IO because the goverment does is as ilogical as anything anyone could ever say.

horace, i will gladly argue these points with you, but if you want to play games and place words in my mouth i will have to call "party foul!" argue what i said, not what you wanted me to say. i relayed a true story, nothing more. i can only assume i sent you subliminal messages through my text that said, "use IO salt because the government does." sorry, my bad.

They are probably helping out somone at IO or IO actually PAYS THEM to use their salt so that you will think exactly what you are stating.. If the goverment uses it why shouldnt I????

damn, you got me. out smarted by the governemnt again. drats! when will i learn that life is nothing but one big conspiracy?

Sorry Henry, you lose

i have nothing to win or lose from this, only corals (and egos) do.

 

[Sloeber]

***WARNING***

Using Instant Ocean salt may cause your corals to grow similar to the following photos. Use at your own risk!

 

[epon]

I really need updated pics, those are a year old :bugeyes:

 

[andycook]

I was thinking the same thing. This discussion would be good in its own thread.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6810309#post6810309 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Benny Z
so how about that group buy...

 

[andycook]

The published levels of elements in the salt mixes doesn't necessarily reflect what is in the bucket I bought. It is what was found in the sample measured. I expect those to vary.

Adding salt mixes together to compensate for low/high amounts of elements seems to ignore the fact that result is additive not an average.

 

[Benny Z]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6810409#post6810409 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by andycook
I was thinking the same thing. This discussion would be good in its own thread.

...or perhaps in the first thread which horace tried to force this controversial proposition upon us.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=6767607#post6767607

:smokin:

 

[andycook]

Good times!

And yet I am not helping this thread at all.

 

[Horace]

What I said was I like to keep my water as close to NSW as possible. I never said my levels are all EXACTLY what NSW is. I would venture to say that NOONE has exactly NSW levels, unless they do daily NSW changes.

I also said FAD because it is somethig new and starting to gain support by alot of people. I personally dont see any reason why anyone would want to discontinue it either when the result is water thats a lot closer to NSW than regular IO.

Also I never said IO is crap or that you cant get good results with IO. Many people use it for years and have a great tank. For the record i also personally use IO soely atm and I think my tank looks pretty damn nice atm. HOWEVER, I DO NOT LIKE THE FACT THAT MY WATER CHANGE LEVELS THAT I LIKE TO KEEP STABLE ARE NOT ACHEIVEABLE WITH IO WITHOUT ADDING MAG AND CALCUIM. I ALSO DONT LIKE HAVING MY ALK ABOVE 8DKH. I like to keep my water at 7-8dkh, Mag 1300, Calcium ~410ppm which are all very close to NSW. When you mix IO it comes out to about Alk 9-10kdh, Mag 1100ppm, and >400ppm Calc. My biggest problem is with the low Magnesium. It takes a ton of Mag additive to raise the water 200ppm and I dont feel like buying extra stuff to keep my mag where it should be. For that reason, IO is just not a great salt to use for my husbandry preferences. If you feel that running above/below the noted levels is fine, then by all means stick with the IO. I would prefer to try to match mother nature as close as possible w/out purchasing a ton of extra crap. Not sure why this is soo tabu with you?

 

[seldon]

you ought to update them epon; i bet you've had quite a bit of growth in 1 year...

 

[brad23]

Hey what ever works for you, if adding two different types of salt works go ahead and do it. Personally I think it's a waste of time and you should just switch to something else (slowly) if you don't like what your using.

 

[Horace]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6810693#post6810693 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by brad23
Hey what ever works for you, if adding two different types of salt works go ahead and do it. Personally I think it's a waste of time and you should just switch to something else (slowly) if you don't like what your using.

The point is that there ARENT any salts out there that are on par with NSW accept for one and thats Seachem. However, Seachem has an elevated boron count and for that reason some are afraid of that too. Thus why people are mixing IO and Oceanic.