Quote:
Originally Posted by Chin_Lee
I'm cheap. I buy cheap salt (whatever's available and cheap on boxing day sales or whatever/wherever salt sales) and I use the reef calculators to bring the numbers up to what I want them to be.
I follow Ben's suggestion http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=26590
I instantly increase Mg by about 200ppm, then Cal by about 100 ppm, then add salt to 1.023. Then I test and bring the alk up to 9-10 at the end. The numbers end up being a little higher than the numbers posted and it doesnt' affect my tanks when the water change is only 10% of the total water volume.
With the above noted method, I had used up 6 buckets of the bad batch of Kent salt, right now I'm using up the 6 replacement buckets of good batch of Kent salt. I've recently bought 10(+1) bags of Oceanpure from Hidden Reef and I'll be using that up next.
I cannot justify spending $90 for a bucket of salt when I'm unable to visually see any side effects of the method I'm using. So for me, its whatever is cheap and available (although cheap does not include the Red Sea Marin brand) |
Don't you feel in the long run with all the testing and addition of supplements and your time it ends up costing you more.
I was of the same mind set as you, until I started to read about the fillers that are in the salts that may boost measures numbers like CA or ALK but have no benefit to corals. I also took a close look at the amount of time I spend getting my water change water perfect. 3 or 4 tests for Mg, ALK and CA while adjusting between each.
What prompted this thread was a need to find out what everyone else was doing (It was successful) but the reason I was wondering was because despite my best I still had a display tank that was reading 4KH. This was do to the inconsistency of the salt I was using. So I'm assuming now there is no way I can read my make up water 2 or 3 times and if it's good Assume it will always be good.
I'm on Tropic Marin now and will measure the 3 basics each time I make a new batch but if I'm forced to add any supplements I will return to a cheaper salt.