I have emailed D-D about Fauna Marin's accusation:
"Please don´t use H2O this salt is relabeled Red Sea Coral Pro and we have some really problems with the coral coloration."
It will be interesting to put this to rest. I will share my reply upon receipt.
Kevin

Great!

I look forward to hearing back about this.

Guys

I can categorically say that our salt is a unique formulation which D-D developed to have in our opinion the ideal parameters for a reef aquarium.

You only have to test the parameters to see that it is obviously not Red Sea Coral Pro rebadged - you can answer this question then yourselves.

We heard this many times in the early days on the UK forums however tests will show that we have:
Lower Calcium at 440ppm
Higher dKH at 9.3
Higher Magnesium at 1340
Higher Potassium at 410

David Saxby http://www.theaquariumsolution.com/d...ys-aquarium-20
spent many months adjusting parameters of salt mixes on his 3500g system adding magnesium, buffer and calcium as required in line with the Balling method.

Once we new where we wanted to go with a formulation we looked at a number of manufacturers, there are only a small number of serious manufacturing companies globally if you take out the small plants where the product is made in small batches in cement mixers.

We decided to use a natural base for the salt using evaporated water from a coral sea as this has the benefit of having all of the main and minor trace elements in the correct balance and more importantly they are homogenous throughout the mix.

As many trace elements are at levels of 1 gm per tonne - how can you expect to mix this small amount evenly through the salt in a synthetic manufacture without tub to tub variations and will these trace elements act as toxins if you get more than natural levels in your bucket or do you just not add them at all?

In the UK the salt has been accepted extremely well and gets excellent reviews from serious reef keepers and this is being repeated in all the other countries that we are now moving into. I have seen some very positive responses on this forum too.

David Saxby has now been running his aquarium exclusively on our salt for the last year and is getting the most amazing colouration and good growth. He can now keep some of the more difficult species of sponges as they are presumably responding to trace elements in the salt that were not there previously.

The only other product that David adds is iodine which he maintains at a level of 0.06ppm. The salt contains iodine at this same level but becomes depleted in the aquarium. Interestingly many salt mixes do not contain any iodine at all.

Side note: On my last aquarium I started to get severe RTN on many corals and this was stopped in its tracks by the addition of iodine as recommended to me by someone on Ultimate Reef forum. The iodine is apparently used to form an enzyme that helps to remove active oxygen from the coral flesh during the night.

David has now stopped the daily dosing of magnesium, calcium and buffer as the H2Ocean salt allows the levels to be maintained through water changes alone - about 15-20% per month.

He still runs a Deltec Calcium reactor however this now only runs at about half the output as the high magnesium makes it significantly easier to maintain the calcium level in your tank.

The only other things that he does are to control phosphate using Rowaphos, control the nitrates using a Deltec NFP vodka reactor and to feed heavily. There are 500 fish in the system and the fine particles that come off the frozen food will feed the corals too.

Hopefully this has answered your question and given you some additional info to think about too

All the best

Stuart

Stuart, thank you for taking the time to respond. Welcome to our little board.

I remember when I used to be a vodka reactor...
I was going to take my tub back to OA and get some seachem..
But I love to see this kind of customer support so I will stick with the h2o and give it a shot...
Plus that article from aquarium water testers takes a little luster off of the seachem reef....

I'm with gsp on staying with tropic marin pro if anybody was going to keep carrying it.

Quote from http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...=fencer&page=6
"Please don´t use H2O this salt is relabeled Red Sea Coral Pro and we have some really problems with the coral coloration.
Take TUNZE Salt or SeaChem or Instant Ocean"

Has anyone ever talked to a store owner etc. with a good "reputation" that would recommend instant ocean for a reef setup unless they have a wide variety of additives they want to sell??

I am glad that my response did some good however I would rather you stick with our salt on the quality of its formulation and consistency than our customer support as this is the real test of a good product range.

To add to what I said earlier I saw that a couple of people had readings that were outside the range that we publish and this concerns me about the method of testing.

We are extremely confident about the levels that we achieve - so much so that we print both a standard and a range on each bucket - how many companies give you that much information in the salt market?. There are retained samples of each 1 tonne batch (batch number on the instructions) and in the past we have had queries about measured levels and gone back to the samples and fond the salt to be correct.

From this I have produced a series of FAQ's on our website to allow people to fully understand our experience with testing and how people use the testing equipment.

http://www.theaquariumsolution.com/node/576

http://www.theaquariumsolution.com/node/494

An extraction from the above is as follows

Whilst we are checking the parameters again I would like you to recheck your own tests and hopefully learn a few things from the further information below.

SALINITY

The levels on the salt are given at a salinity of 1.025 at 25C or 35.5ppt

To measure this salinity with a refractometer you must aim for a reading of 1.0262 as a refractometer will always measure as if the water is at 20C. (most refractometers have on the viewer 20/20)

If you read our salt instructions you will see how to calibrate the refractometer properly which say that the instrument must be at 20C during calibration and not the water.

When you then take a reading the REFRACTOMETER will always measure the SG as if the water is at 20C as the small amount of water that you add to the slide will have no impact on the temperature of the equipment and will soon change to the same temperature as the refractometer.

What ATC ( auto temperature compensation) means is that once calibrated at 20C you can use the refractometer in higher ambient temperatures where the instrument is hotter or colder.

If you use a HYDROMETER which is calibrated at 25 then you must have the water at 25C to get a reading of 1.025 at 25C, (check the calibration temperature printed on the hydrometer). If the water is colder than 25C then you can use the chart on the salt instructions to work out what the salinity must be at that lower temperature so that when you warm it to 25 it drops to 1.025.

Complicated stuff but simple when you understand it.

Whilst writing this reply I have realised that the temperature chart has a mistake on it. It should say on the right hand column "hydrometer calibrated at 25C" and not "SG calibrated at 20C". I changed this as the most common measuring tool was a refractometer however as I have already explained - a refractometer will always read as if the water is 20C and so you always must aim for 1.0262 if you want 1.025 at 25C.

TESTING

What we also found during development was how difficult it was to get accurate testing and we tried a lot of hobby kits against water samples measured in the laboratory. We even sent the same water off to a number of laboratories as 2 separate blind samples and got different results on some parameters, (not on magnesium), on the same water, so if laboratories find it hard to measure then what chance have we with hobby test kits.

What we did conclude is that the Tropic Marine Calcium/Magnesium Test Kit was the most reliable and accurate of the kits that we tried and agreed with the laboratory for magnesium every time. This is not the easiest kit to use and obtains a magnesium reading having first measured the calcium level. You therefore get 2 results with one test kit.

Other test kits we found could often be variable and sometimes out by up to 10% either way, although we did not test all manufacturers' kits.

If you follow the above many people will find that their salinity or SG is not as high as they think it is which is why the readings are often lower than we publish.

Hope this also helps a few people

Cheers

Stuart

Thanks Stuart!

I was going to stick with H2O (as I mentioned earlier) because I have had nothing but great results with it and it tests within range each time I test but this just reassures me even more I guess.

Nice to have you come here and explain things. And put this whole thing to rest.

I think your explanation was pretty much exactly what a few of us thought...salt is only manufactured in a few places around the world so many different mixes are made at the same place but that doesn't make them the same product...

My choices are limited right now... I just ran out of Aquamedic Reef salt, which i REALLY liked, mixed extremely clean and quick... but the LFS can't get any in for a year... so I am stuck between choosing Instant Ocean, H20 or RBS... :neutral:

Thinking about going with this H20... but for $5 more i can get the RBS.. something I know isn't a rebrand.


EDIT: Maybe I should have read all the new posts before posting... LOL Thanks Stuart, for posting. :)

Hello Stuart,

Please correct me if I'm wrong but isn't evaporated water the same as distilled water which is basically just pure H2O. Can trace elements be suspended/supported by water vapour? I use RO/DI for water changes and distilled water for drinking and cooking (doctors freak over this) and both read 000 TDS.

Thanks

I perhaps was not completely clear. If you evaparate the water from salt water from the coral reef you are left with the dried salt.

Cheers

Stuart

So then are you saying that your salt is produced by evaporating saltwater and packaging the salt? I'm sure there are other steps involved, but essentialy this is the base of your salt?

Yes this is basically how the salt is made (I would assume Ca and Mg among other elements are supplemented). That is the reason its called Natural Sea Salt instead of synthetic. If you go to the D-D site its explained.

This part was never a unclear. Rumors were just started about the salt being the exact same as the Red Sea product but they were never based on any fact, just people speculating based on packaging and...not really sure what else.

Thanks. Makes sense now.

Stuart, very informative.
What is the country of manufacture?

On the bucket is says "Made in Israel"

I would guess WAY down in that little area of the south that touches the Red Sea. Would make sense...more salt per gallon of water ;)

If I remember correctly the salinity is high in the Red Sea because it has some of the highest average surface temps of any ocean and come of the least amounts of rain in the area, leading to lots of evaporation and not much fresh water.

So it is re-packaged "red sea" :)

I had to....


Just kidding of course....

LOL...can't argue with that!

Good one :yield:

Or maybe... :israel:

Salt
 

As some who has followed the development of salt mixes over the years we allmust understand something.

Salt used for aquarium is generally just the base scientific grade sodium chloride and a additional trace mineral mix with everything we need for aquariums.

One of the largest reclaimer of trace minerals from salt occurs in the dead sea region in Israel where they extract everything from cobalt to gold from the dried brine.

Lots of aquarium salt manufactures buy their trace element mixes form this large operation in Israel hence dd saying that salt comes from an evaporation based processes.

Whether or not who is combining the salt mix, lots of companies use the trace element mix sourced from the dead sea operations. There is lots of information about over on the zeo forums.

Sorry for the long winded answer but a friend of mine is an engineer at this project and you would be surprised how many salt "manufactures" use their products.

Ryan L

Thanks Ryan...makes even more sense.

I had forgot about the dead sea :) I was just thinking oceans boardering Israel and not lakes.

So I guess they could just collect salt from the shores in that case ;)

Isn't the salt built up a few miles deep now as the lake continues to evaporate?

I think scientists have figured out how many more thousands of years the lake would be around until its just a huge salt deposit.

They both mine existing evaporate and have large ponds on the north end for evaporation.

You can see the operation on google earth it is quite extensive. The amount of gold and other trace elements the reclaim is quite impressive.

My buddy says it's hot as hell and it's out in the sticks but I just thinks he's bitchin' cause he's an Egyptian living in Isreal:biggrin:

Ryan L

Guys

The water to create the base salt comes directly from the ocean where we are sure that the balance of elements is correct for coral growth.

The raw salt is dried and then refined (cleaned) but not processed into individual elements to then re combine them as this would not make sense.

There are certain elements that partially precipitate out when dried and need to be re added and others that need to be boosted for the pro formulation.

It is obviously a little more complicated and scientific than this but you get the idea.

Stuart

Who in Calgary sells H2O? Some of my LPS were not looking so good and I found out my K was low so I started dosing, and now they are looking much better. Now I know why the K was low. Time to ditch the IO and get something better.

Great info. just out of curiosity, does anyone know what processes are involved in 'cleaning' the evaporated base product before it is supplemented?

+1
I am finding there is quite a bit of material left in the bottom of my mixing tank that does not dissolve, kinda looks like silica sand.

I wondered about this too. I would think that they evaporate the seawater and collect the residual salt and add it to the wholesaler salt. Since trace elements are in the ppm to ppb range. I also imagine they add supplments to their salt to balance the composition. I have a hard time imagining that the use of evaporate sea salt can be uniform from batch to batch.

FYI...sort of related. I have seen in refineries that produce gasoline make blends for other companies. The refinery just adds the components that the buyer request in the gas. I would think by the same token many sellers of salt buy from the same wholesaler and the wholesalers just blends the trace components in as per the buyers request. It is possible that the salts inquestion share that same base stock.

Yes that is what i was thinking as well. I don't really know anything about the salt manufacturing process but this is exactly what done fo engine oil. Esso manufactures about 10-12 different brands of engine oil at their refinery in Edmonton and just adds different additives for each companys specifications. but the base stocks are all the same (i suspect alot of the oils are very similar).

I am not familiar with the area where this salt is being evaporated at all, but in general wouldn't the salt water be affected seasonlly based on the currents and plankton blooms etc. Just curious how the manufacturing process maintains a consistent product.

Ya this is what he said earlier.

Hello Stuart,

I was wondering where in Israel your solar drying pans are located?

Thanks Ryan L

We sell H2Ocean salt and have been happy with customer feed back.
Kevin

Thanks Kevin. If I am in town on the weekend I will pick some up.

I switched to H2O from Tropic Marin Pro because of supply problems and have been pretty happy with it but where TMP mixed up totally clean, H2O leaves a yellow-brown slime.
Any ideas what it's from?
Also for what it's worth H2O takes about 1 lb. more per 50 gals to get the same salinity.

i just drop a powerhead in there with a heater and let it mix overnight in the bucket and i find that the residual that i use to get is almost all gone. And yes when mix 5 gallons of water to the seachems i use to use 2 and half to 3 cups and i find with the h20 i have to use 3 cup-ish to get 1.025.

The brown deposit that you are describing is actually composed of small amounts of insoluble material, mostly ferric oxide which is added to the salt with one of boosting additives and is completely inert. In fact it has the potential to act as a flocculent, binding any soluble organic polymers and orthophosphate so that it can be easily removed by the skimmer thus contributing to the quality of the water.

As people have commented negatively on the aesthetics of this occasional deposit we have now changed the supply of the additive so that this is no longer present.

As far as the mix ratio is concerned - the actual mix should be 39.6g / lt whereas a check that we made with some Tropic Marine Pro required 41.2g / lt to give the same salinity.

Remember that the mix is done by weight/volume of water and so to measure in cups per gallon is very rough as it depends on how dry the salt is and how fine/compacted it is.

The correct mix according to my calculation is 1lb of salt to 3.025 US gallons of water to get a salinity of 35.5ppt or an SG at 25C of 1.025.

Remember that the most important thing is how good the tank looks and how healthy the corals appear to be. Do not fall into the trap of the pilot who flies into a mountain because his instruments tell him he is high enough to miss it - use your eyes and observe the differences in your tank.

Cheers

Stuart

We carry the H2O salt and have been extremely impressed with it to the point that I have even changed the store into using it as the only salt for our tanks. Cost wise it may be more but when you factor in having less losses and happier fish and corals...I wouldnt go back:mrgreen:.

Of course we carry other brands as there is no changing everyone until they see the difference for themselves:biggrin:

Dan

Thanks for the great reply, you answered all my questions. And my tank is looking great.

Wow lots of great info in this thread, I'm going to switch over from Instant ocean to H2O.

I made the switch. running my 135 & red sea on it. Colors of corals are awesome. Of course im using Zeo too :)

Ive been using H20 for about a year now and my corals always respond well after a water change.Coral colours became richer,especially the reds.
I was a pleasantly suprised that i was able to use the salt without any calcium,Alk or magnesium additions as i had to previously with another well known salt.

I know,I know this is an old thread but i'm thinking of switching salt from Reefer's best to this H2o salt.Reason is i can get H2o localy and the Reefer's best i have to order.
So i wanna know if everyone is still happy with this salt.
Thank you