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Kevinalewis

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Nov 7, 2011
Messages
90
Who has the best price on reef salt, shipped? I've always picked it up at the lfs. This time I think I'll try to get it off line if it's priced better. I've been using instant ocean salt. This time I'd like to switch to a reef grade. Thanks for all the help.
 
Instant Ocean is perfectly fine. There is no reason to change. There are many people who use it successfully on reef tanks, including myself.
You may find this interesting...from Randy Holmes-Farley.
Here's my rational for using Instant Ocean:

I do not think there is a "best" salt mix. Nearly all of them will work fine as long as you know their pros and cons.

I don't want excessive borate, which leaves out Seachem.

I don't want vitamins or anything else organic in my mix (because I doubt their utility, they degrade with time to who knows what, bacteria may thrive on them as I store new salt water for a substantial period, they are totally undescribed with respect to amounts or identity, they are not naturally present in natural seawater at appreciable levels, and because I've occasionally had them mess with my skimmer), so that tosses out some like Reef Crystals, hW Marinemix Plus BioElements, Kent, Coralife, and Nutri-SeaWater.

I don't want excessive calcium (long term use of limewater as I use drives up calcium, so I do not want it starting high), so that tosses out a bunch, such as Kent, Seachem, Coralife and Oceanic.

There are certain companies that I will not support due to their misleading claims and/or product lines. That tosses out a few which I won't detail here since it is my personal thought as opposed to a specific issue with their salt mix.

I won't use certain lines of natural seawater due to excessive metals in it.

That only leaves a few to choose from, such as Instant Ocean and Tropic Marin Pro. The remaining ones might all be fine for me, but IO is lower in cost, especially if you get it when it goes on sale (which it frequently does). It also has a very long track record of success in many aquaria with relatively few concerning issues of bad batches.
 
Flreefer said:
Are there any known drawbacks to using Red Sea coral Pro salt mix?

I recently switched to this and love it. I used to use reef crystals and never had any issues. I only switched because I had credit at LFS and they only had red sea pro so I got. With reef crystals it used to take 15 or so cups of salt to get 15 gallons to 1.025 with red sea it takes only 9 cups. So my money goes a lot farther with red sea. Other than that both great options for reef tanks.
 
I have been using I/O reef for over a year and recently switched to red sea salt. I wanted the added calcium and alkalinity it is supposed to provide. Only have done 1 water change so far with it so not sure how it will perform long term. :)
 
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