Melt Down ice melter for raising Magnesium?
 

I just bought a bag of Absolute Zero Melt Down ice melter by Envirotech Services Inc to use in conjunction with Magnesium Sulfate on my reef aquarium. The product claims to be 100% Magnesium Chloride Hexahydrate and free of toxic metals and substances. It was $27 for a 50 lbs bag at Amco Wholesale here in Prince George.

Does anyone have any experience with this product?

I'm considering setting up and dosing into a QT tank with some xenia and an acro frag just to see if this has any negative effect on them.

I've tried calling their toll free number and the response that I received from them so far is that they would not recommend it as it is not pharmaceutical grade.

Tagging along - been looking something similar in Victoria. Can't find DeadSea Works products locally.

I got good magnesium for a pretty reasonable price IMO.

Shipping is not too bad if a decent amount is ordered (BG?).

I've ordered from you before and dont have any complaints with your magnesium supplement. I suppose to be on the safe side you are probably the best way to go as ordering from you is cheaper than bulkreefsupply. But I'm really trying to save as much money as I can these days and if this stuff I found locally will work I'll have magnesium for less than $1/lbs where as to order from you cost upwards of $4/lbs after shipping (for 20lbs anyways).

I'm not sure of the brand as I don't have the original bucket kicking around. But I bought a big bucket of driveway melt that was 100% Mag Chloride , tested in my smaller tank and I now use it in my 220gal. I haven't had any problems, but I do dissolve it to near saturation and some "black" does precipitate out. After about 4 pounds being added to a 2L container by adding water and salt without cleaning and I have about 2ml of sediment.

I think as long as your are careful and do "test" it, you should be fine. I picked up my for about $3 for a 25lb bucket.

Here is my experiment to test whether or not this product is safe to use on my reef tank.

I've mixed the 50 lbs of Melt Down with 7.04 lbs of Epson Salts (purchased at Costco) to give me an 7.1:1 weight ratio

"All that is necessary for such a recipe is to add these two ingredients in such a ratio that they add chloride and sulfate in the ratio naturally present in seawater (which is 7.1 to 1 on a weight basis and 9.6 to 1 on a per ion basis)." from: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/20...f/index.php#14

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture251.jpg

Looks safe enough...

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture252.jpg

This is my QT tank set up in front of the kitchen window for some natural lighting as I dont have any extra working lights to spare. However I could borrow the T5 fixture from my nano for a couple of hours each day so I might do that as well. Lucky for me the girlfriend is out of town at the moment so I can get away with crap like this. :twised:

The QT tank is a 20gal filled with aprox 10gal of mature water removed from my main tank during my weekly water change.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture253.jpg

I'm still waiting for the water to warm up to where I want it before I add anything. I'm thinking I'll use one piece of established liverock, and the following frags: birds nest, horn coral, zoanthus, leather and montipora cap.

My plan is to add 1 tsp of Mg supplement each day over the course of 3-7 days and just observe the coral in the tank for any adverse effects.

Any thoughts, ideas or additional recommendations?

I'll post my water parameters for my main tank and for this tank in a bit.

tagging along to see what happens

Current water parameters:
Temp 80ºF (or 78ºF according to a different temperature probe...)
Salinity 1.026
Ca 420
Alk 10dkh
Mg 1350
PO4 .01
NO3 <1ppm

I dosed one tsp of Mg mix dissolved in a cup of RO/DI water yesterday and did another today. So far so good.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture262.jpg

Well its been a week and all is well. By adding 1 tsp a day of this magnesium mix I brought the magnesium level up to 1550 by Saturday so I've stopped adding it. Nitrate and Phosphate are undetectable. I also talked with someone else in town here who has been using this product on his tank for several months without any problems. However he did warn me about using epson salts from costco. He said that the one time he used it his ORP dropped right down and stayed quite low for several days. I dont recall exactly what it went to but I'll take his advice regardless. According to him, Walmart sells a more pure epson salt so I'll have to go check that out.

I'll begin using Melt Down on my display tank and post again in this thread if something should happen in the future.

Tagging along.....