Mixing Salt(s), we probably use the same kind now

[Siffy]

I've been putting off documenting this somewhere, so no time like the present.

It started with the last big water change I did using Instant Ocean salt. My Alk was very high at over 6 meq/L and Ca and Mg were low, somewhere around 320ppm and 1000ppm iirc. That just got me really frustrated with IO (and my test kit, to be honest). Either my bucket had gone bad or was from a bad batch, the Alk out of it had always been off. So it was time for a change.

I've read of many people mixing salts from IO with Oceanic or Kent or Reef Crystals with them, but I wanted to take it a step further. At first I decided I wanted to blend at least 4 or 5 salts from different manufacturers. So I started shopping around and kept saying "I wouldn't mind using that salt". And this is what I ended up with.

Yes, that's 10 ~50g packages of salt. In alphabetical order, I'm now using,
Coralife
H2Ocean Pro
Kent
Oceanic
Oceanpure
Red Sea Coral Pro
Reef Crystals
SeaChem Reef
Tropic Marin
Tunze Reef Excel

for water changes and I'll be using the mixture for first fill of a new tank shortly.

All the salts are being used equally. To make the first ~30g brute of NSW I put in 1 1/2 cups from each brand. It was pretty time consuming with the first batch, but for future batches I'm thinking about filling multiple 1 gallon bags/buckets with dry salt and storing them until needed.

The point of this was mainly to reduce the risk of getting a bad batch of salt. Any 1 salt can only have a 10% impact good or bad on my final mixture. Plus one of the initial discussions I had with a fellow reefer about trying this were also about balance. His thoughts were that over time using just 1 brand of salt will likely leave your tank deficient in some aspects. Things we don't test for so can't be certain. The theory is brand A and brand B (no matter which) will complement each other since they both add things the other doesn't. So far I've done 3 10% water changes with the new mixture and polyp extension as a guide shows me positive results. So at least the new water is better than what was already in the tank.

With the next batch I'm considering sending a sample of the new water to AWT (AquariumWaterTesting.com) for professional testing since I barely trust my salifert kits anymore. I have 2 alk kits and one will read around 2 meq/L and the other will be close to 5 meq/L on the same water sample.

So, thoughts, comments, questions, suggestions?

 

[NeveSSL]

Wow... thats really interesting. Could be a bit expensive to do long term if you're doing multiple small containers of salt, or really expensive up front to buy 200g boxes of all 10 :lol: but a good idea I think.

Let us know how it goes from here. Especially if you send your water to AWT.

Brandon

 

[Siffy]

It was a little more up front than the last time I bought salt. Shipping is where it hurt. That and not being able to get all 10 of them from one location. Here's the breakdown of costs and what I got from where

Marine Depot
DELTEC H2OCEAN MAGNESIUM PRO PLUS SALT MIX 6.6KG BUCKET 1 $19.99
OCEANPURE SEA SALT - 50GAL MIX BAG 1 $11.99
plus $5 per bag "special handling"

Premium Aquatics
Tunze Reef Excel Lab Marine Salt - Bag - makes 63 gallons 1 $26.90

Drs. Foster And Smith
Aquarium Systems Synthetic Sea Salt Reef Crystals 50 gallon mix $11.99 x 1
Coralife Marine Salt 50 gallon mix $14.99 x 1
Kent Sea Salt 50 gallon mix $14.99 x 1
Tropic Marin Sea Salts 50 gallons $18.99 x 1
Oceanic Natural Sea Salt Mix 50 gallon mix $11.99 x 1
Seachem Salt Mixes 50 gallon Reef Salt $13.99 x 1
Coral Pro Salt 55 gallons $14.99 x 1

So obviously I bought most of it from Drs F&S because their shipping is the lowest. I just added all that up for the first time and it was $160.81 (without s+h) for 523g of salt. So it cost me a good bit more than 3 160g buckets of IO, but I'm ok with that since I'm trying something different. And quite frankly, 500 gallons of salt will last me a long time. And interestingly enough, I just realized that Deltec makes one of the salts. Before I'd just seen it listed as D+D. Apparently it's brand new stuff and I got e-mails specifically about it asking what I thought of it already. The Tunze salt is fairly new to the market too. Those 2 are the most expensive per gallon, so that affects the overall cost as well as buying bags rather than buckets.

I went with bags for 2 reasons, most companies sell salt in 50 or 55g bags/boxes and 160, 175 or 200g buckets/boxes. I was ok with having a 10% volume difference but not a 25% one as I'm trying to keep everything as equal as possible. The Tunze is the only one that messes with that this way. They really mess with it using larger bags, since they sell a 63g bag and a 126g bag. I may setup a 10g nano with 1 sps frag in it and a 70w halide over it just to use some of the Tunze salt up.

The other reason is I really couldn't justify having enough salt around to make 1600-2000 gallons of water.

And I'll definitely be posting the report from the water test when I have one done. I just don't plan to send them any from the first batch. Once I use it up and make more (I'll be making >100g in a couple weeks) I'll be shipping them a sample. I think $25-40 for a full range of tests is very reasonable. I could have them done once a month for a year before catching up to what I've spent on test kits and I haven't been in the hobby all that long. Plus they test more than we do/can. I may start doing that. Anyone who hasn't seen their site, should visit http://aquariumwatertesting.com/

 

[NeveSSL]

Wow... thats kind of expensive. Its nice having the range of tests and accuracy, but thats still a bit expensive.

If they could get it down to $10 per month, that would be perfect as I think thats about what I spend a year in tests (or at least I would if I tested as often as I need to ). Maybe it'll come down some.

I would like to do it once. But it won't be any time soon at that price!

Brandon

 

[DMBillies]

Interesting idea... seems like if blending 2 works well to balance things out, mixing 10 will be all the better.

I have, myself, become interested in possible bad batches of salt. If it isn't something we normally test, a tank problem could be directly related to a bad mix without really being able to detect it. Seems that you could reasonably buy 4 big boxes/buckets, still protect yourself quite a bit and get a balance, and save yourself quite a few pennies over 10 smaller bags. I would get some serious looks if I bought that much salt, but I do have a storage unit where I could stick the 4 buckets and just run out there when my mixed up bucket gets empty.

Maybe when I drive home next time (if there is a next time with gas prices so high cheaper to fly) I'll go to That Fish Place and grab a bunch of different kinds without real shipping costs. Seems like finding the salts is the hardest part...