I have used many different brands of salt over the years, and I have never found there to be any difference in my tank's inhabitants. The only difference I have found is ease of mixing, and whether you need to dose to get the params right on the waterchange water. For these reasons, I use IO which is still cheaper even after dosing, and only takes a whopping 45 secs of my time to dose.

So...for those of you who think there really IS a "best" salt, what difference does it make on your inhabitants? WHY do you think your chosen salt is best? Do you have a justifiable reason? If there is justifiable reasoning behind spending $100+ on a bucket of salt (and I don't find lack of dosing a justifiable reason), then I may be compelled to try out one of the newer brands that have hit the market recently.

I once sprung the extra $$ for a "premium" salt, the most expensive Red Coral was selling (before the current owner ran that store), which was Aquamedic. Boy was that ever a lesson. I spent twice as much on that as I could have on say IO, but the difference was that the "parameters" printed on the box were a complete fabrication. Magnesium at 1200! But gee, don't test it because it's really only 700 or so. I was blown away, why go to the trouble of printing numbers on the bucket if they don't in any way match reality? Similar story for Ca and Alk numbers. Complete fabrications.

My advice? Find a salt you like, stick with it, but test it before you use it so you know what you're putting in.

I'm continually behind the curve on this one. People seem to rant and rave about some salt brand, so I'll try it, but I'll finish off what I have before using it. Last year the flavour of the day was RBS, I finally finished off my last bucket of my last batch of salt this morning, and cracked open the RBS, so I'm about to see if I like it too. But then I read this thread and see the flavour of the day has moved onto a different brand. :lol:

To be honest, I never had an issue with IO. I didn't mind the lower Ca and Alk because I dosed that anyhow. Then I switched to Kent and had many trouble free years of use until the bad Alk batch. I sent in for a replacement bucket like so many others but I guess they didn't like me or something because they never sent me the replacement. So I'm not a fan of Kent anymore.

Should have just stuck with IO. :lol:

But I am excited to finally get to try RBS. Yay!

1+ here well said

I agree with you.

Not to mention IO is used by many public aquariums. I myself just can't justify $70+ on a bucket of salt when dosing works just as well.

When you were using Aquamedic, were you rolling your bucket before mixing? I'm doing a batch of WC water now, and finishing off the end of my AM salt... I'll run a test on mine and see what type of numbers I get for CA and ALK.

I've always used IO never had any issues (and I've been using it for 15yrs) so I've never felt a need to replace it.

http://web.archive.org/web/200103032.../1/default.asp

I've seen this before and it's on one of the links posted above but I found this very interesting now that I'm actually considering putting saltwater in a tank in a couple months :lol:

Does anyone here not dose Ca and Alk? I'd like to avoid it as I will be doing rather frequent, heavy water changes in my tank when I get the uncured rock in there, getting less frequent and heavy as the rock cures. Though, in the end, I'd like to do a 10% water change every 5 days once the rock is cured and the tank has cycled.