Which Salt ?

[H@rry]

I lurk around several other club forums and I noticed on the Memphis forum they got together a group order on salt. They put up a poll on the brand preference and Oceanic blew everybody else away. I have never used Oceanic and to tell the truth I never thought about them making salt mix. I've always used Instant Ocean and have been satisfied with it but I'm up to trying a couple of buckets of something else to see what difference it might make. Has anyone here ever used Oceanic? What is your preference and why?

 

[Riner]

I have used it before. IMO Oceanic makes a good salt.

I've heard from several people that it mixes with a higher and more consistant calcium level. In my testing I havent noticed a big difference compared to other brands.

IME it does mix/dissolve very quickly and very well.

I know that several of my customers like it because the 50g size comes in a handy dandy plastic container instead of a bag. But they don't care about calcium levels. They like the storability of it.

Right now I'm currently using premixed RO water from Coral Reef Aquatics. I THINK they use Instant ocean.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

I have used Oceanic salt before. Doesn't it have a higher carbonate level than others? I did not really see much difference in the growth of my livestock, though. I recall Philip was recommending it to Kwajrocks a few years ago when she had difficulty keeping her calcium level steady.

I like Seachem's Reef Salt since it seems to boost the growth of my corals every time I use it.

I was using IO for a few years and then ended up with a bad batch. That's when I switched my salt to Reef Salt. Then I read the summary on the interim report Eric Borneman gave at MACNA and I tried Reef Crystal which Eric and his crew found better than others. They rated Red Sea's salt equally high, but I could not find it locally at the time. I used two large buckets of Reef Crystal, but I was not totally satisfied with it. My SPS did not seem to grow much with it. I suspect that my alkalinity and pH was not consistently high enough. Then I switched back to Seachem Reef Salt and my SPS's started growing fast again - the light colored tips/edges all over and they are colored up better now. This is all anecdotal and no scientific background on it, though. It is simply my experience and I am sure other people have different opinions on these salt mixes since everyone's tanks and conditions are different.

I remember Cee at ETRC mixes a few different kind of salt mixes (I forget which ones he mixes.) He figures that there are always some manufacturing variations and errors, but by mixing a few different ones, you have a better chance of keeping any one parameter from going way out of spec. That makes sense to me.

Tomoko

 

[mltmtascp]

http://aquariumwatertesting.com/AWT_Salt_Analysis_0208.pdf

Here is a link to a site that compares salts.

Monica

 

[NicoleC]

Long term I had extremely poor results with Oceanic and couldn't culture anything in it, which says a lot about it's relationship to natural sea water. Although cheaper, I consistently had to mix the salt at much higher concentrations than the bag/bucket claims to reach reef salinities, so it wasn't cheaper in the long run.

(When you are mixing 25 gallons a day, it matters!

Instant Ocean was always very good for me but I prefer SeaChem, although it does precipitate a lot and you'll need to soak your mixing pumps more often. I like SeaChem Marine over SeaChem Reef, but don't ask me why. Everything just seems to do better with the Marine mix,

 

[H@rry]

Sounds to me like a situation of "if it ain't broke don't try to fix it". Guess I'll stay with IO.

 

[andyjd]

I mix IO with Oceanic

 

[jrthomas40]

i loved red sea coral pro...i have used regular IO had calcium problems could never get it high enough, then tried Reef Cystals calcium was higher but still not that great, went with RSCP everything was great, only reason i am trying oceanic now is the place i get salt from had a sale buy 3 get 1 free and it was only on oceanic and RC so i got 2 of each

 

[edwar050]

Bio assays

 

[8BALL_99]

I've used ReefCrystals for the past year or so.. Before that I just used Instant Ocean.. ReefCrystals seems to do better for me then IO.. Besides they are both made by the same company.. ReefCrystals is suppose to be more for a Reef tank then IO.