Aqua forest reef salt
 

Who is using aqua forest reef salt and what is your thoughts about it?

I switched from reef crystals, overall I'm happy:

Alk is pretty consistent between batches, hovering around 7.7-8, not the lottery that RC seemed to be. Boxes seem more readily available too, but their buckets are an odd size and the lid is kind of a pain to remove. There's also far less sludge/residue after mixing and storing it for a couple days, if that matters.

Some people are stating they've had cyano / dinoflagellate issues after switching, not entirely sure what would be causing that though.

I've been using it for a couple of years. I really like it.

You can get cyano/dinos from trace element imbalances. I'm not saying it's endemic to the salt, but it's something that happens.

Ive switched to af reef salt and had major cyano and dino issues. 2 water changes with instant ocean and dinos / cyano is gone and my corals arnt getting smothered anymore....

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I have been reading of a few people having diatom cyano problems with using aqua forest reef salt also. I just picked up 2 pails after reading a bunch of great reviews, and am now second guessing my choice.

I'm with you on the issues. Here is to hoping that by switching back to RC from AF that I get rid of the slime and my corals stop getting smothered.

That is exactly what I did, started nice and slow and wham-o got purple brown slime in LR. Then it got worse and dinoflagellates started and stringy goo was everywhere. I ended up losing 4 coral frags, a colony and some I'm not sure will pull through. May not be the same for everyone but It was very disheartening for me and not worth the lower parameters.

That sounds awful....sorry for the loss. Nothing worse then battling Dino cyano, might just stick with RC. Maybe someone will want to trade me 2 pails of AF reef salt for RC.
Thanks for sharing your experiences everyone.

It's just like anything in this hobby, every tank responds different. I initially made the switch to AF eager as I had heard nothing but good things. Since my experience I have saw similar circumstances posted with using the AF Reef Salt so now it seems more then a coincidence.

I also ran into some issues with my dendros after switching to af reef salt . Got a white film over some of the heads ended up saving a couple lost over 25 heads . Ended up switching back to h2ocean and tank is stable again . Just going to stick with what I normally use unless a switch is %100 necessary in the future .

I've had good results with it. Are you guys that are getting the white film using the probiotic salt?

Using AF Reef Salt and got purple / brown slimy stuff which likes to smother corals. Hit my sps the worst then Lps and Zoas. I have it somewhat under control but it gets worse when I do my water changes. I will be switching back to either RC or something else which is carried locally. For me I saw no added benefit using the AF Reef Salt although some people swear by it.

That strange that it happens. I bought another pail yesterday so I hope its still good.

Been using AF Sea Salt for 8 months and I am seeing cyano problem progressing as I do more frequent and larger water changes. Going to switch to a different brand once this bucket is done.

Starting to wonder, if using the salt but not using the rest of their method (carbon dosing, etc), is that the real issue. That the salt is front-loaded so to speak with traces that would be otherwise consumed if doing advanced UNLS methodology. That those whom aren't, are instead having the cyano / dino problems.

It could be, not sure but it hasn't worked out well for me. As of now I don't see any benefit of continuing the use of AF salt.

I had read about probiotic salt causing cyano problems, but not the reef salt.
For those having problems I wonder if you are using any carbon dosing, bio pellets?

i tried to use aquaforest's carbon dosing method (probio S and NP pro) and found they were just too effective. they basically drove my nutrients down to unmeasurable which obviously is far from ideal. not to mention it seems counterproductive to be carbon dosing and immediately after dosing NO3 and PO4 just to keep your corals from starving.

What I found is my corals love af reef salt. I had some of the outbreaks too, but the af seems to be lower on ph than others so I just keep my ph/dkh in check and it all went away. been using for 4 months now or so.

Just wanted to chime in that I'm confused with my cyano issue as well. My nutrient load is very low. I use Probiotic AF. If I switch salt and it goes away I'll post again.

If you switch salts and your cyano goes away, I would be very interested to know what salt you switched to. Hope you sort out the problem.

Instant ocean works well for me im sticking with it now as it cleared all the cyano/ dinos fast.

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Are you using plain IO or the reef crystals? I need to get rid of this $#!¥ asap as I hate looking at this slime. I'm hoping with a few WC with new salt it goes away.

Reef cystals. And it will go away. Best thing u can do is watee change and remove as much as possible. But in the days to follow when ot tries to come back just use a small hose and syphon it down into a filter sock in your sump then swap the sock and wash it. Do this every day till its gone. Wont take long.

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Ok sweet! I will give it a whirl, hopefully it takes care of the problem.

These stories of weird algae and dinos with AF salt are interesting. Up until December of 2016 I was battling a neverending problem with algae. I would vacuum up gobs of it while doing water changes. I was also using AF Reef salt. I was running an Evergrow IT2080 LED fixture at the time. In the middle of December it died on me and I didn't get any new lights on it until the end of that month.

Since there were no lights on for two weeks it killed all of the algae. I put a new Evergrow IT5080 fixture as a replacement and I have not had any algae problems since then. Zippo. Nada. Barely even any crystalline for that matter. I reduced the time that the lights are on and reduced the intensity a bit but not by a lot.

I dunno. I'm not a scientist. Perhaps there is a relationship with the lights and something in the salt? I dunno. That's my experience anyways.

Definitely interesting! I have an Evergrow light fixture on my Reef as well. Normally I wouldn't be so upset, except it only presented itself upon making the switch to AF. Literally within the first 2 WC (30g / 20%) it started forming. So what I did was did larger WC thinking I needed to flush it out, besides everything that goes sideways is usually fixed with a WC. WRONG... I just put fuel in to the fire and it got worse to the point of stringy slime covering LR and corals.

How is your tank now? Did you switch salts and to what?

I'm still using AF Reef Salt exclusively. I get a little green algae on the glass but it's not bad. My live rock is pretty much algae-free.

I've used AF probiotic salt before and in my opinion its a good salt. I've always had periodic outbreaks of this and that but can't attribute that necessarily to the salt from AF. At one stage, my nitrates were 50 and my phosphate was 1.0 with sps frags in the tank. So probably nutrient related problems causing the outbreaks.
I think the price point of AF products are great and to me, the fact that i can mix up their salt in 15 minutes it's crystal clear and ready to use with no junk left behind is worth using it.

I have been using AF Reef Salt (in conjunction with Chemi Pure Blue and Seachem Matrix) since starting my first tank about 5 months ago. I had a serious cyano and brown algae issue which I thought would eventually calm down after cycling but around the 4 month mark, nothing was changing and it was rather ugly.

About a month ago, I did a heavy cleaning to rid most of the algae, water change and changed out my media to start using AF Phosphate Minus and AF Carbon with the daily dosing of AF Pro Bio S and AF NP Pro. My algae is now well under control and I'm very happy with the results.

My idea when starting my tank was to go all Aqua Forest products (which I didn't) but happy I eventually went that route. With the addition of more coral in the future, I plan on dosing AF Magnesium/KH/Calcium and the use of AF Build and AF Energy.

Everybody's experience seem to be a little different by I found using Aqua Forests media products in conjunction with the AF Reef Salt yields the best results. Pricing is pretty reasonable too.

Myself had all the same issues that most have been talking about in this thread.I gave up and went back to RC and never looked back.The one nice thing is the last bucket of my AF reef salt is great for melting ice on my drive way

I switched from KZ reefers best and zeobak/food to AF Probiotic salt with Probio S / NP Pro and have not experienced any of the problems in this thread that I would contribute directly to to the salt. The probiotic salt is designed for peopole using the ULNS from AF.

I used AF Reef Salt for some time, had issues with cyano and dino’s. I pulled the plug on AF and went back to RC. Everything is happy including my SPS, no reason for or me to change at this time.

I have had nothing but problems with Aqua Forest products. Had a bad dyno outbreak on one of my tanks after I started using the reef salt. Really bad.

Then I tried using some of the additives (reef build etc) on my other reef tank (never had a problem with dynos, cyno or algae before and since) Using at half the recommended strength started to have what appeared to be dynos growing on the sand after about 3 weeks, could have been diatoms but didn't wait around to see, stopped using did a major water change and it went away. This was about 6 months ago.

I think each tank is different and it can cause problems on some tanks and for some tanks its the miracle drug.

For everyone complaining about using AF probiotic salt causing issues in your tank, don't expect to add a new product without having some adverse effects. You cant change something as significant as your salt mix and think its magically going to make your reef better or solve problems without understanding probiotics. If the salt contains a carbon source for bacteria and you make a huge 75 or 100% water change its pretty obvious you could face immediate problems. Not to mention messing with the general water chemistry in which your reef was used to.

I wasn't switching to the pro-biotic method only switching brands of salt. The reef salt isn't supposed to contain pro-biotics. I have been keeping fish for over 30 years. I have never had a problem changing the salt from 1 brand to another depending on what was on sale. Also I never used 100% Aqua Forest reef salt I mixed it 50% with Reef Crystals.

I am only commenting on my experience with Aqua Forest not someone else's.

But aquaforest salt is not the cheapest salt so for those of us that changed were expecting results of some sort. Because as good of a deal aquaforest products are, their reef salts are still a lot more than the cheapest on sale such as Instant Ocean.

the thread is asking peoples experiences with aquaforest salt (most of which use their reef salt) so it only makes sense that people reply with their reactions so i'm not sure what else there is to say about that.
otherwise, i don't think its a matter so much of a simple salt change causing adverse reactions in peoples systems. it's more about people switching to a "carbon enhanced" salt that also focuses on adding trace elements. in my case my tank didn't need those secret additives and it sent my tank into a tailspin that was resolved when i changed out of it.
personally, i feel like it is a salt that better suits biologically established systems as you'll also see many complains about new systems struggling with it. especially ones that start with dry-dead rock.

I think you brought up a lot of good points. This is just it. Its not so much about one salt is crappy its about the balance of your system can be thrown off.