Considering different salt brand
 

I am currently running Instant Ocean. Now that my tank is much more reef oriented I am going to try either Instant Ocean Reef Crystals or D-D H2Ocean.

Anyone used both and have a preference? The price is about $25 more for the H2Ocean.

I already dose min quantities with essential elements, idoine, calcium (if low), and aragamilk between weekly water changes.

Why change if everything is still working okay

I changed from a more expensive brand back to Instant Ocean due to the fact that I still had to dose with the more expensive brand.

The reason I am considering change is that I am always dosing with calcium... I finally have my levels up now but for a while I was sitting at below 400.

Considering different salt brand
 

Doesn't matter what your calcium starts at it will always go down if you have corals. You will have to dose calcium no matter what salt you use. For the 25$ that you spend extra on a bucket of salt you can get enough 2 part suppliment to last a year.


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Hum I you guys are right. What are the benifits of these "reef" salts?

The benefits are that both the salt producer and the LFS make higher margins.

so the producer can make more money.

It's as Poon said, corals and clams pull the Ca out of the water to grow, that's the reason for manual dosing/dosing pumps or Ca reactors

Considering different salt brand
 

Pretty much it's just a matter of they have a bit more of everything in them or a slightly different balance. It's a never ending debate on which salt is best but personally I think that one need only look at some of the amazing tanks out there that run simply on good old IO.


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Well then, I will just reallocate that money somewhere else in the tank then :lol:

What do you guys think of having the lights come on in the mourning (for feeding) then off during part of the day. Then back on when I get home and for the second feeding?

The problem that I am running into is that I leave for work at 6AM, so the lights come on and they don't get shut off till 10PM when I go to bed. So thats 16hrs of on time... No wonder why I have some green algae.

So can I split the on time during the day? Will the corals like that (mine receed when the lights turn off)

I would think that would screw up the fish/corals. Just my opinion.
You could always think about a timer, turn on the actinics first for feeding, then have the daylights come on after you're gone, then turn the daylights off first and then leave the actinics on for a bit before bed?

I kinda thought it would mess them up a bit too. I like that idea the atinics should be enough for feeding at least with the room lights on aswell. I will move the bulbs around and give that a try.

So far I have just been turning the room lights on for 10 minutes then turn one assembly on for 20-30 min then the other assembly. For night they all get turned off at once. I will pick up two timers and give this a whirl.

I was using Instant Ocean before and due to the low calcium and mag in that salt I switched to DD H2O and very happy with that salt.

Unlike IO, the H2O salt is natural salt and it is very complete mix with all trace elements that are in the ocean.

A person I know had some bad effect on his orange digitata when switching to h2O salt but I did not have any problem with mine.

I bought some awesome zoanthids and paly from a person in the USA who was using Reef Crystal and his coral were amazingly beautiful with very large polyps, so Reef Crystal is also a very good mix to use but I don't want to return to IO.